12), several works by Kluth including a portrait of Barlach, and unidentified
watercolors
by Hartmann.
Samuel Beckett
Fielding took an infusion of tar in water, a remedy for dropsy recommended by Bishop Berkeley in Siris (1744) (Pat Rogers, Henry Fielding: A Biography [London: Paul Elk, 1979] 213.
3 SBreferstoapaintingnotbyGermanartistMaxSlevogt(1868-1932),butbyLovis Corinth, Eduard, Count van Keyserling (no. 8986) in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich: it depicts the German writer Keyserling (1855-1918), with a full upturned mustache; Sarah Purser's portrait Roger Casement, Patriot and Revolutionary (NG! 938) depicts Sir Roger Casement (1864-1916) with a similar mustache as well as a full beard. Inadvertently, SB writes the name of Roger Casement's brother Thomas Hugh Jephson Casement (1863-1939), who established the Coast Life Saving Service in Ireland. SB also conflates Eduard Graf von Keyserling with his cousin Hermann Graf von Keyserling whose book Ussher had requested that SB find for him (see 31 December 1936, n. 10).
4 "KargFreitag"(meagerFriday)ratherthan"Karfreitag"(GoodFriday).
The date of the Feast of the Annunciation is 25 March; in 1937, Good Friday was celebrated on 26 March.
5 Der Ratschluss der Erliisung (The Decree of Redemption) by German-born Swiss painter Konrad Witz (c. 1400 - c. 1446), seen by SB in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, is now in the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin (KF 1673). The painting depicts the Trinity with iconography of the Incarnation: God the Father on his throne designating an obedient Christ as redeemer, with a dove between them to represent the Holy Spirit hovering over the open book; a lamb just behind them, and a key suspended between them to signify the sacrifice and key of the house of David; Mary and Elizabeth, both pregnant,
475
Dresden who had seen his picture.
26 March 1937, Ussher
are depicted in the right foreground. The painting is considered the "Visitation" or first station of the life of Christ; it is one panel from the Altarpiece of the Mirror of Salvation (also known as The Heilsspiegel Altarpiece) which was painted c. 1435 for the Leonhardskirche in Basel; its panels were dispersed in 1529. One double-sided panel is in the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Dijon (see 15 June 1938, n. 2).
"Witz" (joke).
Konrad Witz's birthplace is now known to be Rotweill, Germany; he was admitted to the Basel Guild of Painters as "Master Konrad of Rottweil" in 1434. Several times SB notes in his German diary that Witz's birth place was Nantes, and he reports that he had annoyed Gunter Francke in Munich by mentioning that Witz was French (BIF, UoR: GD 3/f. 1, 18 December 1936; GD 4/f. 18, 21 January 1936; GD 6/f. 45, 25 March 1937; and GD 6/f. 71, 31 March 1937; Mark Nixon).
Konrad Witz was the son of the painter Hans Witz (n. d. ) whose identity has historically been confused with other painters, one of whom worked in Nantes at the beginning of the fifteenth century Uosef Hecht, Konstanz, "Der Aufenthalt des Konrad Witz in Konstanz: Ein Problem und seine Li:isung Neue Forschungen zur Lebensgeschichte des Meisters," Zeitschrift fiir Kunstgeschichte 6. 5/6 11937], 353-370; Emmanuel Benezit, ed. , Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de taus ! es temps et de taus ! es pays, 3rd edn. [Paris: Grund, 1976] 774).
6 SB uses the German spelling of these towns, with the exception of Colmar which, in German, is Kalmar. "Aus" (over).
7 Although St. Paul's Cathedral in London has a "whispering gallery," SB here refers to Dublin.
SB planned to spend a week with Mrs. Frost, 34 Gertrude Street, London.
8 SBomitsawordhere.
9 GermanpoetandnovelistHansCarossa(1878-1956). "PeachKirkwoodHackett" may refer to Mme. Eva Kirkwood Hackett (1877-1968), theatre producer in Dublin in the 1930s and later a film actress.
"O verleme die Zeit, / Dass nicht dein Antlitz verkiimmre / Und mit dem Antlitz <las Herz! " (Learn to disregard time so that your countenance may not wither away, and with your countenance your heart) is from Hans Carossa's poem "Ein Stem Singt" (A Star Sings), first published in Gedichte (1923) and reprinted in Hans Carossa and Eva Kampmann-Carossa, Gedichte: Die Veriiffentlichungen zu Lebzeiten und Gedichte aus dem Nachlass (Frankfurt: Insel, 1995) 64-65. SB writes the standard form, "verkiimmere," whereas the poem uses the contracted form, "verkiimmre. "
10 It is not known which anthology Ussher had - presumably - mentioned in his letter.
11 While Cecil Salkeld may have had a position as an Inspector, this has not been confirmed. Will Grohmann was familiar with Salkeld's work (see 16 February 1937, n. 14).
12 Arland Ussher's first wife was Emily (nee Whitehead, c. 1898-1974), his father was Beverley Grant Ussher (1867-1956), and his daughter is Henrietta Owen Ussher Staples (b. 1926).
"Gehorsamst" (most obediently).
476
30 March 1937, Albrecht
GUNTER ALBRECHT HAMBURG
30/3/37 Miinchen Pension Romana
Akademiestrasse
Dear Gunter Albrecht
Very many thanks indeed for your letters and the Fontane,
which I neither possess nor have read. I am sorry you have had
such trouble in getting in touch with me. Three weeks ago I left
instructions with the Postlagernd to send on everything here.
Perhaps it is their duty to get tired after a fortnight, when the
1
Germany. I am tired and can see nothing more, all the surfaces remain surfaces and that is terrible. I had meant to go on by Augsburg, Ulm, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Strassburg, Kolmar, Karslruhe [for Karlsruhe], Frankfurt, Berlin again and home from there, and as I write the names I curse the small capacity that excludes the possibility, temporarily at least, oftheir being anything more than names. I fly from here next Friday morning, straight to London, where I shall stay probably a week before going on to Dublin.
It was a strange zigzag from Berlin: Halle (to see the
Moritzburg pictures), a Buhnenbildner in love with Mexico
where he met Traven and the Weise Collection, (mostly
Kirchners), Erfurt (chiefly to see the Heckel frescos which are
not particularly good), Weimar, Naumburg, Leipzig (where even
the colossal Klinger Exhibition and a concert in the Gewandhaus
could not console me), and from there with relief straight to
2
instructions are not renewed.
I write to you almost on the eve of my departure from
Dresden. I was content there for three weeks. I met a lot of
477
30 March 1937, Albrecht
friendly and intelligent people, including a whole colony of Russians, blue with blood and privations taken good-humour edly. Biely and vodka go well together I found. Also the dancer Palucca and a charming art historian now duly in deep disgrace but also good-humoured, too interested in the phenomenon to think of exile, Will Grohmann, with to his credit books on and catalogues of Klee and Kandinsky and Baumeister and others. 3 Through him I was enabled to visit the Ida Bienert collection, which must be one of the best modem collections in Germany, practically everything from Cezanne to Mo[n]drian except the Briicke, which is not represented at all: the best Kandinsky I have seen, quantities of Klee and three lovely Picassos. And a portrait by Kokoschka of a woman I used to know in Paris years ago! 4
As you say the pictures in the Zwinger are vilely hung
and lit. The Rembrandt room, Director Posse's pride and
joy, is a scandal. The Vermeer Kupplerin, cowering between a
Rembrandt old man and a Bal philosopher and beneath some
thing enormous and dirty by I think Eeckhout, was literally
invisible. I saw it for the first time the day I left in the full light
of one of the end rooms, where a copyist had contrived to have it
5
left leg destroyed by some damn 19th century restorer in the
service of a taste offended by the putto with the bird, now
painted over with senseless landscape. I saw the X-Ray photo
6
Flemish or Italian primitives) it remains a splendid collection. I never saw a better Antonello than the St. Sebastian. 7
The Zwinger itself, in spite of the here and there very irres olute restoration, has still enough ofwhat Poppelmann meant it
478
temporarilytransferred. TheGiorgioneisinamess,thewhole
graph, which however doesn't show very much.
But in spite of the wretched presentation and the gaps (no
to have to give one the essence and the melancholy of barock. There are sad passages, the arcades leading up to the entrance on the garden side. I felt the Kronentor was wrong, too high and florid, an over-statement. But it was so from the beginning, according to Bellotto, whom I refuse to call Canaletto. 8
I made a few halfhearted excursions, in spite of the weather, to Meissen, where some of the Dome [for Dom] statues are probably by the Naumburg Master, and to Pillnitz, where the core on the water is lovely. 9
I saw more whores in Dresden, whores ofthe old school, any evening I felt so inclined, than in all the months since October and all the places since Hamburg put together. Sachsischer Stiitzwechsel! 10
From Dresden it went on by Freiberg, Bamberg, Wiirzburg, Niirnberg, and Regensburg. Niirnberg was so horrible, as I more or less expected, that I extended my resentments even to the Great Period and found good reasons, mostly connected with the expulsion of the Jews in 1499 (they didn't get back for nearly 4 centuries) and the Wittenberg catastrophe of 1517, for impugning the value of Stoss and Kraft and Pleydenwurff and Vischer and Wohlgemut [for Wolgemut] and even the great AD himself. The Diirer room in the Germanisches Museum is another scandal, the portrait of Wohlgemut eked out with the dreariest of workshop Kitsch and a copy of the Apostles! 11
I am too close to Miinchen to say anything more definite than that I infinitely prefer Hamburg or Berlin. Perhaps it is the Fohn! I spend most of my time needless to say in the Alte Pinakothek, which I now know so well that I can walk through the entire collection without having to pass a Rubens! 12 I haven't made any of the prescribed excursions, Garmisch, Mittenwald,
479
30 March 1937, Albrecht
30 March 1937, Albrecht
Konigsschlosser, etc. , and shall not, in spite ofan Alpine sportive
compositor picked up in the Hotbrauhaus who assured me that
there were as many Masters of the Death of the Virgin as there
13
I exchanged a few politenesses with a girl in Severing's
bookshop who knew you and Kaun in Leipzig. You were "der
grosse Schwarze" in her phraseology. I shall have the pleasure
there in an hour's time of being introduced to Alverdes, whose
Kleine Reise I began but did not go on with. 14 I have been reading
a lot of Carossa, Geheimnisse, Gion and Fiihrung, kindly lent
by Kaun, and find it, to ne [for be] quite frank, bloody awful in
the end, the complete flight into style. I met yet another friend
of Rilke, every second person of a certain degree of culture in
German seems to have been a friend of Rilke, a conservator
in the Bavarian Nat. Museum, who assured me that Rilke linked
15
were Masters and Dead Virgins, but only one Zugspitz[e].
up with Proust in his "decentralisation of the soul".
I also met
the actor Eggers-Kestner, whom you may remember from the
time he was in Hamburg. He has a lovely picture by Ballmer,
Kluths and Ruhwohlds [for Ruwoldts] and the politest of polite
Hartmann watercolours. He gave me Ballmer's Aber Herr
Heidigger [for Heidegger]! to read and a MS Deutschtum u.
Christentum in the same direction but too Steinerisch for the
16
nicht, ich will nicht".
I saw that Munich legend Valentin and found him a come
dian of the very first order but perhaps just beginning his
18
think you have already: 6 Clare Street, Dublin, l. F. S. Let us keep in touch with one another. In the very throes of labour camp and military service you will have plenty to get off your chest
480
non-initiate.
drawings but the reply, in a very terrified tone, was "lch will
I have just rung up Piper to try and get the Barlach
17
decline.
The rest I leave over for another letter. My home address I
and - I hope - leisure to do it. I was very glad to hear your painter friend had had some success. Remember me to him. I hear
19
Yours ever
s/ Sam Beckett
TLS; 1 leaf,2 sides; BIF,UoR,MS 5037.
1 On28March,SBreceivedEffiBriest(1894)byGermanpoetandnovelistTheodor Fontane (1819-1898) (BIF,UoR,GD 6/f. 55).
"Postlagernd" (paste restante).
2 In this letter SB summarizes his experiences in Germany since leaving Berlin: rather than repeat information,the notes supply cross-references.
"Lebensstufen" ("Stages of Life"),Erich Heckel's fresco on the four walls of a room in the Anger Museum,Erfurt,was painted in 1922-1924. SB admired the figure of the German poet Stefan George (1868-1933) surrounded by members of his circle,but observed that the fresco was crowded with iconography and was not in good repair (BIF,UoR,GD 4/f. 27,24 January 1937; see also Mechthild Lucke,Erich Heckel,and Andreas Huneke, Erich Heckel, Lebensstufen: die Wandbilder im Angermuseum zu Eijurt [Dresden: Verlag der Kunst,19921). Later in 1937,and through the war,the entrance to the Heckel room was blocked offto hide it from the Nazis; as a result,the fresco suffered damage from prolonged damp and cold,but it is now on view in the Anger Museum,having undergone restoration.
The Max Klinger Exhibition in Leipzig: SB to Thomas McGreevy,30 January 1937,n. 1; the concert in the Gewandhaus on 28 January in Leipzig: SB to Thomas McGreevy,16 February 1937,n. 13.
3 The colony of Russians in Dresden,especially the Obolensky and von Gersdorff families: 16 February 1937; for the lecture on Bely: 23 February 1937.
Through Heinz Porep, SB met the German dancer and choreographer Gret Palucca (1902-1993),formerly married to Ida Bienert's son Fritz Bienert (1891-1969). Palucca introduced SB to the art historian Will Grohmann. Grohmann's writings: 16 February 1937,n. 14.
4 SB's visit to Ida Bienert's collection is discussed in 16 February 1937. Bienert purchased many of Kandinsky's works directly from the artist (Grohmann's catalogue of her collection is comprehensive only through 1933: Die Sammlung Ida Bienert, Dresden, 21, fig. 36, 36-42; later acquisitions as well as the current ownership of Kandinsky works in her collection can be found in Hans K. Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin,Kandinsky, Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, 2 vols. [Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press,1982-1984] I,346,476; II,672,851; and watercolors can be found in Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours: Catalogue Raisonne, II [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1994] 150,156,280,337,373).
There were thirty-nine paintings by Paul Klee in the Bienert Collection (Grohmann, ed. ,Die Sammlung Ida Bienert, Dresden, 21-22,figs. 43-59). Picasso paintings in her
481
Grimm is married.
Kindest regards to your family.
30 March 1937, Albrecht
30 March 1937, Albrecht
collection were Woman with Hat, Waltz, and the gouache on paper The Seamstress (23-24, figs. 7-9).
Bienert also then owned the portrait of Nancy Cunard, Englanderin, painted by Kokoschka in 1924: see 16 February 1937, n. 15.
5 TheZwingerMuseuminDresdenanditsDirectorHansPosse:16February1937, n. 2 and n. 11.
Vermeer's Kupplerin (The Procuress) and its hanging in the Rembrandt Hall of the Zwinger are described in 16 February 1937, n. 8 and n. 9; it was hung between paintings by Rembrandt and Salomon Koninck and under a painting by Ferdinand Bo! , not Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621-1674).
SB's last visit to the museum was on 17 February:
See it, in the good light, really for first time, the man on left clearly, and the lurid evening sky through space between him & [? woman], that does not function in the Rembrandt room, & that flattens & defines the key of the whole picture, gives it substance & immediacy, an immediacy of the everlasting transitory, situates it in eternity. Without it the picture was [. . . ] adrift, overcrowded, overheated, only excellent genre. With it it is Vermeer. (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 5, 17 February 1937, Nixon and Knowlson transcription)
6 Giorgione'sVenusintheZwingercollection:16February1937,n. 4.
7 SBreferstoAntonellodaMessina'spaintingTheMartyrdomofSt. Sebastian;acard of this image was sent to McGreevy on 2 February 1937, and SB describes it further in 16 February 1937 (see also n. 7 to that letter).
8 SB'sdiscussionofthearchitectureandrestorationoftheZwinger:16February 1937, n. 2. The Kronentor, the tower that crowns the main entrance of the Zwinger Palace, is depicted in The Zwinger Palace in Dresden by Italian painter Bernardo Bellotto (NPG, 629; see bildarchiv. skd-dresden. de/). Bellotto adopted Canaletto as his name outside of Italy, but SB recognizes this as the name of his uncle and master Canaletto (ne Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768).
9 On12February,SBwenttoMeissen. Thesculpturesinthechoirandcomersofthe mid-Gothic Dom in Meissen (c. 1260-1280) are ascribed to the thirteenth-century Naumburg Master; they are larger than life-size, but less naturalistic than his sculptures in Naumburg (Hans-Joachim Mrusek, Drei sachsische Kathedralen: Merseburg, Naumburg, Meissen [Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1976] 370).
On 16 February, SB went to Pillnitz; he describes the town which is dominated by the Schloss Pillnitz designed by Matthaus Poppelmann with steps down to terraces, and from there to the edge of the Elbe River.
10 "Sachsischer Stiitzwechsel" (Saxon support system); SB compares the prosti tutes lined up along the street to "Stiitzenwechsel," a pattern typical of Romanesque architecture in Saxony that alternates styles of piers or columns; he has noted this term in his German diary when describing the Dom in Hildesheim.
11 FreiberginSaxony. SB'sdiscussionofNuremberg:7March1937.
12 The "Fohn" (warm, dry wind from the Alps) is often thought to be a cause of illness or nervousness, called F6hnkrankheit (Fohn-sickness).
482
30 March 1937, Albrecht
The sixty-four paintings by Rubens in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in 1936 were hung in Rooms V and VI, and in Cabinets XII and XIV; the rooms were located off a loggia, and the Cabinets were entered through the rooms (Karl Baedeker, Das Deutsche Reich und einige Grenzgebiete, Reisehand! ruch fiir Bahn und Auto [Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1936] 472).
13 SBdidnottaketypicalexcursionsfromMunich:Garmisch-Partenkirchen(where the 1936 winter Olympics had been held) and Mittenwald in the Bavarian Alps, and Kiinigsschliisser, the castle of King Ludwig II (1845-1886) near Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. SB mentions the Hofbrauhaus, the compositor, the Masters ofDead Virgins, and the Zugspitze in his letter of25 March 1937.
14 SBvisitedSevering'sbookshopinMunichatthesuggestionofPorep'sfriend, the dentist Dr. Richard Zarnitz. Axel Kaun: 18 January 1937 to Mary Manning Howe, n. 10.
"Der grosse Schwarze" (the big dark one).
SB met German writer and editor Paul Alverdes (1897-1979) at the bookstore on this day; SB began Kleine Reise: Aus einem Tage! ruch (1933; Small Journey: From a Journal). Alverdes is best known for his novel Die f'. feiferstube (1929; The Whistler) which he discussed with SB (BIF, UoR, GD 6/f. 63).
15 Axel Kaun had lent SB Hans Caressa's Geheimnisse des reifen Lebens: aus den Aufzeichungen Angermanns (1936; Secrets of the Mature Life: From the Notations of Angermann), Der Arzt Gion (1931; Doctor Gion), and Fiihrung und Geleit, ein Lebensgedenkbuch (1933; Guidance and Companionship: A Life Memoir).
SB refers to Hans Rupe (see 25 March 1937, n. 12). In his diary, SB recorded his discussion with Rupe about Rilke and Proust (BIF, UoR, GD 6/f. 77).
16 The art collection ofKurt Eggers-Kestner included a painting ofthe children of Eggers-Kestner by Ballmer (see 25 March 1937, n.
12), several works by Kluth including a portrait of Barlach, and unidentified watercolors by Hartmann. SB had met artist Hans Martin Ruwoldt through Grimm (see 28 November 1937 [for 1936], n. 15, and Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 50-51).
Karl Ballmer, Aber Herr Heidegger! Zur Frei! rurger Rektoratsrede Martin Heideggers (Basel: Verlag von Rudolf Geering, 1933; But Mr. Heidegger! Concerning Martin Heidegger's Freiburg Inaugural Address as Rector). Ballmer was influenced by the theories ofthe Austrian-born founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Ballmer's manuscript was of a book published much later, and perhaps by then revised, as Deutschtum und Chlistentum in der Theosophie des Goetheanismus (Besazio: Verlag Fomasella, 1966; Germanness and Christianity in the Theosophy of Goetheanism).
17 On SB's behalf, Eggers-Kestner contacted Munich publisher Reinhard Piper (1879-1953) to see if SB could acquire a volume of Ernst Barlach's drawings, Zeichnungen (1935), published by Piper Verlag. Piper was very reluctant, anxious that a copy might be discovered in customs, but he said he would think it over.
The collection of drawings by Barlach had been planned in 1934 when Barlach's work was still allowed; publication proceeded even though by 1935 Barlach's work had been withdrawn from public view. But on 24 March 1936, "The Bavarian Political Police forbade the further sale ofthe volume ofBarlach's drawings and confiscated the 3,419 bound and unbound copies in the publisher's warehouse, on the grounds that the work's 'content is likely to endanger public safety and order'" (Peter Paret, An Artist
483
30 March 1937, Albrecht
Against the Third Reich: Ernst Barlach, 1933-1938 ! Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003] 96). Both Piper and Barlach took steps to fight this ban (Paret, 77-107).
"Ich will nicht, ich will nicht" (I don't want to, I don't want to).
18 SB saw a performance by the German cabaret and film comic Karl Valentin (1882-1948) at the Benz Cabaret in Munich, and soon after, on the day before he left Germany, SB went with the actor Eichheim to meet Valentin (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 241; BIF, UoR, GD 6/f. 71 and f. 73).
19 InfulfillmentofhisReichsarbeitsdienst(NationalService),Albrechtservedina Labor camp in early 1937. Albrecht's painter friend has not been identified.
Willem Grimm married Kathe Franck (1910-1992) in March 1937.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
13/4/37 6 Clare Street Dublin
Dear George
Thanks for your note.
I hear that Nelson are trying to do a line in Irish authors.
1
want a third MS I can let you have it. I trust you received the second safely.
Any time you feel like throwing your hat at the whole thing I shall stand you a new one.
3
1 The publishers Thomas Nelson and Sons, Edinburgh, London, and New York, published the novel Somewhere to the Sea (1936) by Irish writer Kenneth Sarr (ne Kenneth
Shiels Reddin). but there is no evidence ofa new publishing direction for this firm.
484
Perhaps you might send Murphy next to them. ButthebestchanceseemsnowtheUSA&thenNott. Ifyou
2
Pomposo continues to occupy me. Kindest regards to Miss Vernon4
Yours ever Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU.
2 SB refers to seeking a publisher for Murphy. Writing to Reavey on 23 February 1937, SB had indicated that a second manuscript was with Mary Manning Howe in the United States, and a third in Dublin.
3 SB refers to his research and writing on Samuel Johnson, who was nicknamed "Pomposo" by Charles Churchill (1731-1764) in his satirical poem The Ghost (London: William Flexney, 1762).
4 ClodineGwyneddCade(neeVernonJones),Reavey'sfiancee.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
14/4/37 6 Clare St. Dublin
dear George
Was it Nelson that I suggested in my note yesterday? Please
1
ing Murphy to one Harrison Smith of Doubleday Doran & then if necessary to someone she knows in the Viking Press. 2 Don't you think you should get in touch with her if you intend to handle the MS in USA? In case you have lost her address it is: 136 Myrtle Street, Boston, Mass.
Gehorsamst3 Sam
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU.
1 PublishersThomasNelsonandSons.
2 Oliver Harrison Smith (1888-1971) was an Editor with Doubleday Doran from 1936 to 1938, following the merger of his firm Haas and Smith with Random House in 1936 (Alden Whitman, "Harrison Smith of the Saturday Review is Dead," The New York Times 9 January 1971: 30; "Harrison Smith (1888-1971)," Saturday Review 54. 4 [23 January 19711 30).
Mary Manning Howe's contact at Viking Press in New York has not been identified. 3 "Gehorsamst"(mostobediently).
485
14 April 1937, Reavey
note that was my intention.
I hear from my friend Mrs Howe of Boston that she is show
26 April 1937, McGreevy THOMAS McGREEVY
LONDON
26/4/37 Foxrock [Co. Dublin] Dear Tom
Many thanks for your letter. Your descriptions ofO'Faolain &
1
comfortable. The afternoon withJBY was as pleasant as it always
is when one has him to oneself. He had a lovely new swamp - &
sea piece called the Little Waves of Breffni [for Breffny]. He has
five pictures in the Academy, including the boy & horse that I
had the reproduction of and I think 2 quite new ones that I have
2
Jack to the Academy dinner. I saw the Hones with Frank the following Monday. There was a nice misprint in Crampton
3
with my tortuous puff of the Amaranthers. I sent it to you. 4
The Lun;:at is back on the wall in Charlemont House, very
well repaired as far as I can see, but abominably hung, low down
in the long overlit room with the awful J. E. Blanches, in a
corner. I hear Kelly or whatever the curator is called confessed
sadly to Stella Solomons Starkey - ofall people! - to not knowing
5
Frere Reeves were reassuring.
I have been in a daze since returning, very stupid & fairly
notseen. IhavenotbeentotheAcademy. Gogartysaidpublicly he had never seen such a collection of pictures anywhere. Cottie came in later from the Hone watercolours in Waddington's Gallery in Anne Street, very rueful that she couldn't go with
Walker's blurb, Daubingy for Daubigny.
You don't mention having received the Dublin Magazine
agreatdealaboutit. Buthewasreadingitup,hesaid. TheJack Yeats Low Tide, in the Academy I think 2 years ago, and pre sented by Justice Meredith, was being derided by three ladies the
486
ing 2 girls in their nighties astride a roofridge in the moonlight.
26 April 1937, McGreevy
day I was there. There seem to be a number of new AEs, includ
6
The old bitch I was so fond of was destroyed (chloroformed)
last Saturday week, unbeknown to me, while I was at Jack Yeats'.
I was very upset, as I had wanted to be with her at the end, to try
7
&makeitperhapsalittleeasier. Motherwasprostrated,inbed for 2 days after it, and it was very hard work indeed getting her to take a reasonable view of what oneself could not take a reasonable view of. Apart from that she is much the same, with as few really good days as really bad. Frank spends most of his spare time with his girl. He has bought Joyce's Irish Place Names in 3 volumes, knows a lot already about Celtic etymolo gies & has cleaned his paint box. We are going to-morrow to the Exhibition of the Water-Colour Society! 8
I went one day with Cissie to see Boss. He has been moved,
to the new place perched above Rathdrum attached to the
county home, mainly the creation of my good uncle Gerald,
9
run by some Sisters of mercy. There he is more comfortable, and quite simply seven months worse than when I saw him last. I think he knows now he is dying & has given up the idea of ever coming home. I of course can't stimulate him, but when the Liam O'Briens & Seumas O'Sullivans go down he keeps them amused in the old way. Cissie is also a little worse than she was & less than ever able to move about. [. . . ] The son is still in the veldt, chafing to get home. 10
I had half a card from George, announcing another rejec tion. I sent him another copy & he has the two out now, I think
11
487
I have not looked him up, nor Dennis [for Denis] either. I hear Dennis asked Edward Sheehy, the only paid member of staff on Dublin To-Day [for Ireland To-Day] to get me to review his poems.
one with Nelson. He also mentioned Brian had been over.
26 April 1937, McGreevy
It is not a job that I would much relish, though of course I wd. have to execute myself. 12 So far I have heard nothing about it.
I had lunch with Leventhal but do not expect to see much of him. He seems to have made great friends with S. O'Sullivan & Austin Clarke, who has settled over here (Kimmage) now[. . . ] & was seen at the Academy with even more than his melancholy expression. 13
I called once on Ethna Maccarthy but she was not in. The young Pourbus Old Woman was leaning against the wall. 14
I met Joe Hone in the library & he invited me to dine one Saturday evening, which I accepted. Then at the last moment he rang me up and said that his wife said that the Lennox Robinsons, also invited, were enemies of mine & that it would not go! I said I was stupid about such things, ed. never remember who loved me & who hated me & who tolerated me & who did not, and that by all means let it be called up. A couple of nights later I dined, the only guest, and was given a bottle of stout15 [. . •)
Some of the Poussins have gone on loan to Paris, the Cranach to the Kaiser Friedrich and the awful Franz Hals some where else. 16
Nancy Cunard sent me from France Dos Poemas, one by herself & the other by a Spaniard, the usual indignations. 17
Ruddy making a fool of himself in Dublin Mag. , dragging in the memory of his dead wife, the footsteps that do not come, no peace till he rests beside her, etc. , all apropos ofLord de Talby's [for Tabley's] verse. A foul article by Lwellyn [for Llewelyn] Powys on Dr Johnson, making him out a John Bull, the orthodox balls in fact. By the way, I mentioned the Vincent O'Sullivan thing to Joe Hone, who had heard nothing of it & said he wd. very gladly subscribe if he knew to what quarter. 18
488
I like walking more & more, & the less aim the better. I was on the Big Sugarloafon Saturday and yesterday found in a field near Enniskerry a lovely small Celtic cross with still the dim low reliefofa Christ crucified with head duly inclined to the north. Frank wants me to go with him at Whit to Clonmel & walk the Galtees & the Blackstairs & so I will. I should love to see Cashel again. 19
I have been working, in so far as I have been working at all, at the Johnson thing, to find my petition of principle, after many disappointments, more strikingly confirmed than I had dared hope. It seems now quite certain that he was rather absurdly in love with her, all the 15 years he was at Streatham, though there is no text for the impotence. It becomes more interesting - the fake rage to cover his retreat from her, then the real rage when he realises that no retreat was necessary, and beneath both the despair ofthe lover with nothing to love with - and much more difficult. 20 It explains what has never been explained, i. e. his esteem for the imbecile Mr Thrale. 21 The last meeting in 1783, about 6 months before her marriage to Piozzi, a year before his death, has always remained nebulous. He has a briefreference to it in his Meditations. I think that is an interview that must be written, though I should have wished either to keep it all in 1784 or spread it to catch the scene where the Thrales find him on his knees before Dr Delap, praying for a continuance ofhis reason. Arthur Murphy is important, the only one, not excluding Fanny Burney, ofthe Streatham Circle who stuck to Ml"S_ Thrale through the scandal. I think we will have a very quiet Dr Johnson. Perhaps his nigger Frank Barber was the only person he never bellowed at. 22
I read Dujardin's Lauriers . . . and realised how extremely charitable it was in Joyce to invoke him to Larbaud & how very
489
26 April 1937, McGreevy
26 April 1937, McGreevy
modest his proposal that his conception of the monologue was not identical with the model's. Or perhaps it was neither charity
23
cheerful, but I think you are hypersensitive in that connexion.
25
couple of nights, in the bed where I had it the first time almost
exactly 11 years ago, but as little anxiety as then. Perhaps it is
that the phase of impatience with one's own limitations has
nearly exhausted itself. I feel now that I shall meet the most of
my days from now on here and in tolerable content, not feeling
much guilt at making the most of what ease there is to be had
and not bothering very much about effort. After all there
has been an effort. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps, it is
Dr Johnson's dream of happiness, driving rapidly to & from
26
27
1 McGreevy'scommentsaboutSeanO'FaolainandLondonpublishersFrere-Reeves are not known.
2 Jack Yeats wrote to McGreevy on 20 April 1937 that SB had visited the previous Saturday, 17 April (TCD, MS 10381/143).
Yeats's new painting was The Little Waves ofBreffny (private collection, Pyle 495). His paintings in the 108th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts were: Boy and Horse (see 29 January 1936, n. 2), While Grass Grows (Waterford Municipal Art Gallery 76, Pyle 492), A Morning in a City (NGI 1050, Pyle 493), An Evening in Spring (private collection, Pyle 494), and Dancing on the Deck (Waddington Gallery, London, Pyle 443).
490
nor modesty, but simply astuce again.
Alan Thompson's wife bore him a son yesterday.
Your account of the evening with Charles was not very
24
I have not written to him and must do so.
I have had the old internal combustion heart & head a
nowhere in a postchaise with a pretty woman.
Cissie met O'Malley at Grange House & liked him. Write again soon.
Love ever Sam
ALS; 5 leaves. 5 sides; TCD, MS 10402/126.
3 On17April,CottieYeatshadseenanexhibitionofoilsandwatercolorsbyIrish landscape painter Nathaniel Hone (1831-1917) at the Victor Waddington Gallery, 28 South Anne Street, that ran from 13 to 20 April. SB and Frank Beckett saw it on Monday, 19 April. Irish artist John Crampton Walker (1890-1942) prepared the Catalogue of Exhibition of Pictures by the Late Nathaniel Hone RH. A. at Victor Waddington Gallery; in the one-page biographical essay the name of French landscape painter Charles-Fran,;ois Daubigny (1817-1878) is misspelled.
4 SB'sreviewofTheAmaranthers:"AnImaginativeWork! "80-81.
5 The damage to Lur,;at's Decorative Landscape (a hole near the center and several small ones at the side) had been repaired by J. J. Cory's, Picture Restorer, 51 Grafton Street (invoice for repair, 13 August 1935, Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane; see also 5 May 1935, n. 6, and Sunday [22 September 1935], n. 2). John F. Kelly was Curator of the Municipal Gallery of Modem Art from 1 October 1935 to 1954. Stella Solomons Starkey was a good friend of Sarah Purser; Purser, as the leader of the Friends of the National Collections, had been responsible for bringing the painting into the collection.
The paintings by Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942) in the collection at this time included Jeanne and Mischief (Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, no. 294 and no. 293).
6 LowTidebyJackB. Yeatshadbeenshowninthe1935RoyalHibernianAcademy Exhibition; it was bought byJusticeJames Creed Meredith and presented in 1937 to the Municipal Gallery of Modem Art: 5 May 1935, n. 3.
There were thirteen paintings by AE in the collection at this time, many of which were part of the 1904 gift of Hugh Lane; the museum opened in Charlemont House in 1933, and may have rotated the paintings on exhibition, which would explain why the painting to which SB refers, On the Roof Top, Moonlight (Dublin City Museum The Hugh Lane, no. 32), may have been "new" to SB (Patrick Casey, Dublin City Museum The Hugh Lane, 2 June 2006).
7 SBreferstohisdogWolf.
8 Frank'sgirl,JeanVioletWright(1906-1966).
Frank Beckett bought Patrick Weston Joyce, The Origin and History of Irish Names of
Places, 3 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company oflreland; London: Longmans, Green, n. d. [after 19131).
The 83rd Exhibition of The Water Colour Society of Ireland was held at Mills's Hall, Merrion Row, Dublin, April-May 1937.
9 Gerald Paul Gordon Beckett (1888-1950), SB's uncle, was the County Medical Officer for Wicklow. Boss Sinclair had been moved in November 1936 (see 28 November 1937 [for 1936], n. 25).
10 Liam O'Brien (6 Briaine, 1888-1974), Irish Nationalist and Professor of French, University College Galway. The Sinclairs' son, Morris Sinclair, was in South Africa.
11 George Reavey's letter to SB, to which SB's of 13 April is a reply, has not been found; however, Hamish Hamilton wrote to Reavey on 9 April 1937 rejecting Murphy: "Alas, Beckett's book is as obscure as I feared! I don't feel that I can make an offer" (TxU). SB had suggested Nelson as a possible publisher for Murphy, but no
491
26 April 1937, McGreevy
26 April 1937, McGreevy
evidence has been found of the manuscript being submitted to them. Brian Coffey had been in London.
12 SBreferstoDenisDevlin'scollectionofpoemsIntercessions,notyetpublishedby Reavey'sEuropa Press. Irish writerEdward Sheehy (c. 1910-1956) was on the staffof Ireland To-Day, a journal published from June 1936 to March 1938, edited by Frank O'Connor.
3 SBreferstoapaintingnotbyGermanartistMaxSlevogt(1868-1932),butbyLovis Corinth, Eduard, Count van Keyserling (no. 8986) in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich: it depicts the German writer Keyserling (1855-1918), with a full upturned mustache; Sarah Purser's portrait Roger Casement, Patriot and Revolutionary (NG! 938) depicts Sir Roger Casement (1864-1916) with a similar mustache as well as a full beard. Inadvertently, SB writes the name of Roger Casement's brother Thomas Hugh Jephson Casement (1863-1939), who established the Coast Life Saving Service in Ireland. SB also conflates Eduard Graf von Keyserling with his cousin Hermann Graf von Keyserling whose book Ussher had requested that SB find for him (see 31 December 1936, n. 10).
4 "KargFreitag"(meagerFriday)ratherthan"Karfreitag"(GoodFriday).
The date of the Feast of the Annunciation is 25 March; in 1937, Good Friday was celebrated on 26 March.
5 Der Ratschluss der Erliisung (The Decree of Redemption) by German-born Swiss painter Konrad Witz (c. 1400 - c. 1446), seen by SB in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, is now in the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin (KF 1673). The painting depicts the Trinity with iconography of the Incarnation: God the Father on his throne designating an obedient Christ as redeemer, with a dove between them to represent the Holy Spirit hovering over the open book; a lamb just behind them, and a key suspended between them to signify the sacrifice and key of the house of David; Mary and Elizabeth, both pregnant,
475
Dresden who had seen his picture.
26 March 1937, Ussher
are depicted in the right foreground. The painting is considered the "Visitation" or first station of the life of Christ; it is one panel from the Altarpiece of the Mirror of Salvation (also known as The Heilsspiegel Altarpiece) which was painted c. 1435 for the Leonhardskirche in Basel; its panels were dispersed in 1529. One double-sided panel is in the Musee des Beaux-Arts, Dijon (see 15 June 1938, n. 2).
"Witz" (joke).
Konrad Witz's birthplace is now known to be Rotweill, Germany; he was admitted to the Basel Guild of Painters as "Master Konrad of Rottweil" in 1434. Several times SB notes in his German diary that Witz's birth place was Nantes, and he reports that he had annoyed Gunter Francke in Munich by mentioning that Witz was French (BIF, UoR: GD 3/f. 1, 18 December 1936; GD 4/f. 18, 21 January 1936; GD 6/f. 45, 25 March 1937; and GD 6/f. 71, 31 March 1937; Mark Nixon).
Konrad Witz was the son of the painter Hans Witz (n. d. ) whose identity has historically been confused with other painters, one of whom worked in Nantes at the beginning of the fifteenth century Uosef Hecht, Konstanz, "Der Aufenthalt des Konrad Witz in Konstanz: Ein Problem und seine Li:isung Neue Forschungen zur Lebensgeschichte des Meisters," Zeitschrift fiir Kunstgeschichte 6. 5/6 11937], 353-370; Emmanuel Benezit, ed. , Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs de taus ! es temps et de taus ! es pays, 3rd edn. [Paris: Grund, 1976] 774).
6 SB uses the German spelling of these towns, with the exception of Colmar which, in German, is Kalmar. "Aus" (over).
7 Although St. Paul's Cathedral in London has a "whispering gallery," SB here refers to Dublin.
SB planned to spend a week with Mrs. Frost, 34 Gertrude Street, London.
8 SBomitsawordhere.
9 GermanpoetandnovelistHansCarossa(1878-1956). "PeachKirkwoodHackett" may refer to Mme. Eva Kirkwood Hackett (1877-1968), theatre producer in Dublin in the 1930s and later a film actress.
"O verleme die Zeit, / Dass nicht dein Antlitz verkiimmre / Und mit dem Antlitz <las Herz! " (Learn to disregard time so that your countenance may not wither away, and with your countenance your heart) is from Hans Carossa's poem "Ein Stem Singt" (A Star Sings), first published in Gedichte (1923) and reprinted in Hans Carossa and Eva Kampmann-Carossa, Gedichte: Die Veriiffentlichungen zu Lebzeiten und Gedichte aus dem Nachlass (Frankfurt: Insel, 1995) 64-65. SB writes the standard form, "verkiimmere," whereas the poem uses the contracted form, "verkiimmre. "
10 It is not known which anthology Ussher had - presumably - mentioned in his letter.
11 While Cecil Salkeld may have had a position as an Inspector, this has not been confirmed. Will Grohmann was familiar with Salkeld's work (see 16 February 1937, n. 14).
12 Arland Ussher's first wife was Emily (nee Whitehead, c. 1898-1974), his father was Beverley Grant Ussher (1867-1956), and his daughter is Henrietta Owen Ussher Staples (b. 1926).
"Gehorsamst" (most obediently).
476
30 March 1937, Albrecht
GUNTER ALBRECHT HAMBURG
30/3/37 Miinchen Pension Romana
Akademiestrasse
Dear Gunter Albrecht
Very many thanks indeed for your letters and the Fontane,
which I neither possess nor have read. I am sorry you have had
such trouble in getting in touch with me. Three weeks ago I left
instructions with the Postlagernd to send on everything here.
Perhaps it is their duty to get tired after a fortnight, when the
1
Germany. I am tired and can see nothing more, all the surfaces remain surfaces and that is terrible. I had meant to go on by Augsburg, Ulm, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Strassburg, Kolmar, Karslruhe [for Karlsruhe], Frankfurt, Berlin again and home from there, and as I write the names I curse the small capacity that excludes the possibility, temporarily at least, oftheir being anything more than names. I fly from here next Friday morning, straight to London, where I shall stay probably a week before going on to Dublin.
It was a strange zigzag from Berlin: Halle (to see the
Moritzburg pictures), a Buhnenbildner in love with Mexico
where he met Traven and the Weise Collection, (mostly
Kirchners), Erfurt (chiefly to see the Heckel frescos which are
not particularly good), Weimar, Naumburg, Leipzig (where even
the colossal Klinger Exhibition and a concert in the Gewandhaus
could not console me), and from there with relief straight to
2
instructions are not renewed.
I write to you almost on the eve of my departure from
Dresden. I was content there for three weeks. I met a lot of
477
30 March 1937, Albrecht
friendly and intelligent people, including a whole colony of Russians, blue with blood and privations taken good-humour edly. Biely and vodka go well together I found. Also the dancer Palucca and a charming art historian now duly in deep disgrace but also good-humoured, too interested in the phenomenon to think of exile, Will Grohmann, with to his credit books on and catalogues of Klee and Kandinsky and Baumeister and others. 3 Through him I was enabled to visit the Ida Bienert collection, which must be one of the best modem collections in Germany, practically everything from Cezanne to Mo[n]drian except the Briicke, which is not represented at all: the best Kandinsky I have seen, quantities of Klee and three lovely Picassos. And a portrait by Kokoschka of a woman I used to know in Paris years ago! 4
As you say the pictures in the Zwinger are vilely hung
and lit. The Rembrandt room, Director Posse's pride and
joy, is a scandal. The Vermeer Kupplerin, cowering between a
Rembrandt old man and a Bal philosopher and beneath some
thing enormous and dirty by I think Eeckhout, was literally
invisible. I saw it for the first time the day I left in the full light
of one of the end rooms, where a copyist had contrived to have it
5
left leg destroyed by some damn 19th century restorer in the
service of a taste offended by the putto with the bird, now
painted over with senseless landscape. I saw the X-Ray photo
6
Flemish or Italian primitives) it remains a splendid collection. I never saw a better Antonello than the St. Sebastian. 7
The Zwinger itself, in spite of the here and there very irres olute restoration, has still enough ofwhat Poppelmann meant it
478
temporarilytransferred. TheGiorgioneisinamess,thewhole
graph, which however doesn't show very much.
But in spite of the wretched presentation and the gaps (no
to have to give one the essence and the melancholy of barock. There are sad passages, the arcades leading up to the entrance on the garden side. I felt the Kronentor was wrong, too high and florid, an over-statement. But it was so from the beginning, according to Bellotto, whom I refuse to call Canaletto. 8
I made a few halfhearted excursions, in spite of the weather, to Meissen, where some of the Dome [for Dom] statues are probably by the Naumburg Master, and to Pillnitz, where the core on the water is lovely. 9
I saw more whores in Dresden, whores ofthe old school, any evening I felt so inclined, than in all the months since October and all the places since Hamburg put together. Sachsischer Stiitzwechsel! 10
From Dresden it went on by Freiberg, Bamberg, Wiirzburg, Niirnberg, and Regensburg. Niirnberg was so horrible, as I more or less expected, that I extended my resentments even to the Great Period and found good reasons, mostly connected with the expulsion of the Jews in 1499 (they didn't get back for nearly 4 centuries) and the Wittenberg catastrophe of 1517, for impugning the value of Stoss and Kraft and Pleydenwurff and Vischer and Wohlgemut [for Wolgemut] and even the great AD himself. The Diirer room in the Germanisches Museum is another scandal, the portrait of Wohlgemut eked out with the dreariest of workshop Kitsch and a copy of the Apostles! 11
I am too close to Miinchen to say anything more definite than that I infinitely prefer Hamburg or Berlin. Perhaps it is the Fohn! I spend most of my time needless to say in the Alte Pinakothek, which I now know so well that I can walk through the entire collection without having to pass a Rubens! 12 I haven't made any of the prescribed excursions, Garmisch, Mittenwald,
479
30 March 1937, Albrecht
30 March 1937, Albrecht
Konigsschlosser, etc. , and shall not, in spite ofan Alpine sportive
compositor picked up in the Hotbrauhaus who assured me that
there were as many Masters of the Death of the Virgin as there
13
I exchanged a few politenesses with a girl in Severing's
bookshop who knew you and Kaun in Leipzig. You were "der
grosse Schwarze" in her phraseology. I shall have the pleasure
there in an hour's time of being introduced to Alverdes, whose
Kleine Reise I began but did not go on with. 14 I have been reading
a lot of Carossa, Geheimnisse, Gion and Fiihrung, kindly lent
by Kaun, and find it, to ne [for be] quite frank, bloody awful in
the end, the complete flight into style. I met yet another friend
of Rilke, every second person of a certain degree of culture in
German seems to have been a friend of Rilke, a conservator
in the Bavarian Nat. Museum, who assured me that Rilke linked
15
were Masters and Dead Virgins, but only one Zugspitz[e].
up with Proust in his "decentralisation of the soul".
I also met
the actor Eggers-Kestner, whom you may remember from the
time he was in Hamburg. He has a lovely picture by Ballmer,
Kluths and Ruhwohlds [for Ruwoldts] and the politest of polite
Hartmann watercolours. He gave me Ballmer's Aber Herr
Heidigger [for Heidegger]! to read and a MS Deutschtum u.
Christentum in the same direction but too Steinerisch for the
16
nicht, ich will nicht".
I saw that Munich legend Valentin and found him a come
dian of the very first order but perhaps just beginning his
18
think you have already: 6 Clare Street, Dublin, l. F. S. Let us keep in touch with one another. In the very throes of labour camp and military service you will have plenty to get off your chest
480
non-initiate.
drawings but the reply, in a very terrified tone, was "lch will
I have just rung up Piper to try and get the Barlach
17
decline.
The rest I leave over for another letter. My home address I
and - I hope - leisure to do it. I was very glad to hear your painter friend had had some success. Remember me to him. I hear
19
Yours ever
s/ Sam Beckett
TLS; 1 leaf,2 sides; BIF,UoR,MS 5037.
1 On28March,SBreceivedEffiBriest(1894)byGermanpoetandnovelistTheodor Fontane (1819-1898) (BIF,UoR,GD 6/f. 55).
"Postlagernd" (paste restante).
2 In this letter SB summarizes his experiences in Germany since leaving Berlin: rather than repeat information,the notes supply cross-references.
"Lebensstufen" ("Stages of Life"),Erich Heckel's fresco on the four walls of a room in the Anger Museum,Erfurt,was painted in 1922-1924. SB admired the figure of the German poet Stefan George (1868-1933) surrounded by members of his circle,but observed that the fresco was crowded with iconography and was not in good repair (BIF,UoR,GD 4/f. 27,24 January 1937; see also Mechthild Lucke,Erich Heckel,and Andreas Huneke, Erich Heckel, Lebensstufen: die Wandbilder im Angermuseum zu Eijurt [Dresden: Verlag der Kunst,19921). Later in 1937,and through the war,the entrance to the Heckel room was blocked offto hide it from the Nazis; as a result,the fresco suffered damage from prolonged damp and cold,but it is now on view in the Anger Museum,having undergone restoration.
The Max Klinger Exhibition in Leipzig: SB to Thomas McGreevy,30 January 1937,n. 1; the concert in the Gewandhaus on 28 January in Leipzig: SB to Thomas McGreevy,16 February 1937,n. 13.
3 The colony of Russians in Dresden,especially the Obolensky and von Gersdorff families: 16 February 1937; for the lecture on Bely: 23 February 1937.
Through Heinz Porep, SB met the German dancer and choreographer Gret Palucca (1902-1993),formerly married to Ida Bienert's son Fritz Bienert (1891-1969). Palucca introduced SB to the art historian Will Grohmann. Grohmann's writings: 16 February 1937,n. 14.
4 SB's visit to Ida Bienert's collection is discussed in 16 February 1937. Bienert purchased many of Kandinsky's works directly from the artist (Grohmann's catalogue of her collection is comprehensive only through 1933: Die Sammlung Ida Bienert, Dresden, 21, fig. 36, 36-42; later acquisitions as well as the current ownership of Kandinsky works in her collection can be found in Hans K. Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin,Kandinsky, Catalogue Raisonne ofthe Oil Paintings, 2 vols. [Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press,1982-1984] I,346,476; II,672,851; and watercolors can be found in Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours: Catalogue Raisonne, II [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,1994] 150,156,280,337,373).
There were thirty-nine paintings by Paul Klee in the Bienert Collection (Grohmann, ed. ,Die Sammlung Ida Bienert, Dresden, 21-22,figs. 43-59). Picasso paintings in her
481
Grimm is married.
Kindest regards to your family.
30 March 1937, Albrecht
30 March 1937, Albrecht
collection were Woman with Hat, Waltz, and the gouache on paper The Seamstress (23-24, figs. 7-9).
Bienert also then owned the portrait of Nancy Cunard, Englanderin, painted by Kokoschka in 1924: see 16 February 1937, n. 15.
5 TheZwingerMuseuminDresdenanditsDirectorHansPosse:16February1937, n. 2 and n. 11.
Vermeer's Kupplerin (The Procuress) and its hanging in the Rembrandt Hall of the Zwinger are described in 16 February 1937, n. 8 and n. 9; it was hung between paintings by Rembrandt and Salomon Koninck and under a painting by Ferdinand Bo! , not Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621-1674).
SB's last visit to the museum was on 17 February:
See it, in the good light, really for first time, the man on left clearly, and the lurid evening sky through space between him & [? woman], that does not function in the Rembrandt room, & that flattens & defines the key of the whole picture, gives it substance & immediacy, an immediacy of the everlasting transitory, situates it in eternity. Without it the picture was [. . . ] adrift, overcrowded, overheated, only excellent genre. With it it is Vermeer. (BIF, UoR, GD 5/f. 5, 17 February 1937, Nixon and Knowlson transcription)
6 Giorgione'sVenusintheZwingercollection:16February1937,n. 4.
7 SBreferstoAntonellodaMessina'spaintingTheMartyrdomofSt. Sebastian;acard of this image was sent to McGreevy on 2 February 1937, and SB describes it further in 16 February 1937 (see also n. 7 to that letter).
8 SB'sdiscussionofthearchitectureandrestorationoftheZwinger:16February 1937, n. 2. The Kronentor, the tower that crowns the main entrance of the Zwinger Palace, is depicted in The Zwinger Palace in Dresden by Italian painter Bernardo Bellotto (NPG, 629; see bildarchiv. skd-dresden. de/). Bellotto adopted Canaletto as his name outside of Italy, but SB recognizes this as the name of his uncle and master Canaletto (ne Giovanni Antonio Canal, 1697-1768).
9 On12February,SBwenttoMeissen. Thesculpturesinthechoirandcomersofthe mid-Gothic Dom in Meissen (c. 1260-1280) are ascribed to the thirteenth-century Naumburg Master; they are larger than life-size, but less naturalistic than his sculptures in Naumburg (Hans-Joachim Mrusek, Drei sachsische Kathedralen: Merseburg, Naumburg, Meissen [Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1976] 370).
On 16 February, SB went to Pillnitz; he describes the town which is dominated by the Schloss Pillnitz designed by Matthaus Poppelmann with steps down to terraces, and from there to the edge of the Elbe River.
10 "Sachsischer Stiitzwechsel" (Saxon support system); SB compares the prosti tutes lined up along the street to "Stiitzenwechsel," a pattern typical of Romanesque architecture in Saxony that alternates styles of piers or columns; he has noted this term in his German diary when describing the Dom in Hildesheim.
11 FreiberginSaxony. SB'sdiscussionofNuremberg:7March1937.
12 The "Fohn" (warm, dry wind from the Alps) is often thought to be a cause of illness or nervousness, called F6hnkrankheit (Fohn-sickness).
482
30 March 1937, Albrecht
The sixty-four paintings by Rubens in the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich in 1936 were hung in Rooms V and VI, and in Cabinets XII and XIV; the rooms were located off a loggia, and the Cabinets were entered through the rooms (Karl Baedeker, Das Deutsche Reich und einige Grenzgebiete, Reisehand! ruch fiir Bahn und Auto [Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1936] 472).
13 SBdidnottaketypicalexcursionsfromMunich:Garmisch-Partenkirchen(where the 1936 winter Olympics had been held) and Mittenwald in the Bavarian Alps, and Kiinigsschliisser, the castle of King Ludwig II (1845-1886) near Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. SB mentions the Hofbrauhaus, the compositor, the Masters ofDead Virgins, and the Zugspitze in his letter of25 March 1937.
14 SBvisitedSevering'sbookshopinMunichatthesuggestionofPorep'sfriend, the dentist Dr. Richard Zarnitz. Axel Kaun: 18 January 1937 to Mary Manning Howe, n. 10.
"Der grosse Schwarze" (the big dark one).
SB met German writer and editor Paul Alverdes (1897-1979) at the bookstore on this day; SB began Kleine Reise: Aus einem Tage! ruch (1933; Small Journey: From a Journal). Alverdes is best known for his novel Die f'. feiferstube (1929; The Whistler) which he discussed with SB (BIF, UoR, GD 6/f. 63).
15 Axel Kaun had lent SB Hans Caressa's Geheimnisse des reifen Lebens: aus den Aufzeichungen Angermanns (1936; Secrets of the Mature Life: From the Notations of Angermann), Der Arzt Gion (1931; Doctor Gion), and Fiihrung und Geleit, ein Lebensgedenkbuch (1933; Guidance and Companionship: A Life Memoir).
SB refers to Hans Rupe (see 25 March 1937, n. 12). In his diary, SB recorded his discussion with Rupe about Rilke and Proust (BIF, UoR, GD 6/f. 77).
16 The art collection ofKurt Eggers-Kestner included a painting ofthe children of Eggers-Kestner by Ballmer (see 25 March 1937, n.
12), several works by Kluth including a portrait of Barlach, and unidentified watercolors by Hartmann. SB had met artist Hans Martin Ruwoldt through Grimm (see 28 November 1937 [for 1936], n. 15, and Beckett, Alles kommt aufso vie! an, 50-51).
Karl Ballmer, Aber Herr Heidegger! Zur Frei! rurger Rektoratsrede Martin Heideggers (Basel: Verlag von Rudolf Geering, 1933; But Mr. Heidegger! Concerning Martin Heidegger's Freiburg Inaugural Address as Rector). Ballmer was influenced by the theories ofthe Austrian-born founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Ballmer's manuscript was of a book published much later, and perhaps by then revised, as Deutschtum und Chlistentum in der Theosophie des Goetheanismus (Besazio: Verlag Fomasella, 1966; Germanness and Christianity in the Theosophy of Goetheanism).
17 On SB's behalf, Eggers-Kestner contacted Munich publisher Reinhard Piper (1879-1953) to see if SB could acquire a volume of Ernst Barlach's drawings, Zeichnungen (1935), published by Piper Verlag. Piper was very reluctant, anxious that a copy might be discovered in customs, but he said he would think it over.
The collection of drawings by Barlach had been planned in 1934 when Barlach's work was still allowed; publication proceeded even though by 1935 Barlach's work had been withdrawn from public view. But on 24 March 1936, "The Bavarian Political Police forbade the further sale ofthe volume ofBarlach's drawings and confiscated the 3,419 bound and unbound copies in the publisher's warehouse, on the grounds that the work's 'content is likely to endanger public safety and order'" (Peter Paret, An Artist
483
30 March 1937, Albrecht
Against the Third Reich: Ernst Barlach, 1933-1938 ! Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003] 96). Both Piper and Barlach took steps to fight this ban (Paret, 77-107).
"Ich will nicht, ich will nicht" (I don't want to, I don't want to).
18 SB saw a performance by the German cabaret and film comic Karl Valentin (1882-1948) at the Benz Cabaret in Munich, and soon after, on the day before he left Germany, SB went with the actor Eichheim to meet Valentin (Knowlson, Damned to Fame, 241; BIF, UoR, GD 6/f. 71 and f. 73).
19 InfulfillmentofhisReichsarbeitsdienst(NationalService),Albrechtservedina Labor camp in early 1937. Albrecht's painter friend has not been identified.
Willem Grimm married Kathe Franck (1910-1992) in March 1937.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
13/4/37 6 Clare Street Dublin
Dear George
Thanks for your note.
I hear that Nelson are trying to do a line in Irish authors.
1
want a third MS I can let you have it. I trust you received the second safely.
Any time you feel like throwing your hat at the whole thing I shall stand you a new one.
3
1 The publishers Thomas Nelson and Sons, Edinburgh, London, and New York, published the novel Somewhere to the Sea (1936) by Irish writer Kenneth Sarr (ne Kenneth
Shiels Reddin). but there is no evidence ofa new publishing direction for this firm.
484
Perhaps you might send Murphy next to them. ButthebestchanceseemsnowtheUSA&thenNott. Ifyou
2
Pomposo continues to occupy me. Kindest regards to Miss Vernon4
Yours ever Sam
ALS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU.
2 SB refers to seeking a publisher for Murphy. Writing to Reavey on 23 February 1937, SB had indicated that a second manuscript was with Mary Manning Howe in the United States, and a third in Dublin.
3 SB refers to his research and writing on Samuel Johnson, who was nicknamed "Pomposo" by Charles Churchill (1731-1764) in his satirical poem The Ghost (London: William Flexney, 1762).
4 ClodineGwyneddCade(neeVernonJones),Reavey'sfiancee.
GEORGE REAVEY LONDON
14/4/37 6 Clare St. Dublin
dear George
Was it Nelson that I suggested in my note yesterday? Please
1
ing Murphy to one Harrison Smith of Doubleday Doran & then if necessary to someone she knows in the Viking Press. 2 Don't you think you should get in touch with her if you intend to handle the MS in USA? In case you have lost her address it is: 136 Myrtle Street, Boston, Mass.
Gehorsamst3 Sam
APCS; 1 leaf, 1 side; TxU.
1 PublishersThomasNelsonandSons.
2 Oliver Harrison Smith (1888-1971) was an Editor with Doubleday Doran from 1936 to 1938, following the merger of his firm Haas and Smith with Random House in 1936 (Alden Whitman, "Harrison Smith of the Saturday Review is Dead," The New York Times 9 January 1971: 30; "Harrison Smith (1888-1971)," Saturday Review 54. 4 [23 January 19711 30).
Mary Manning Howe's contact at Viking Press in New York has not been identified. 3 "Gehorsamst"(mostobediently).
485
14 April 1937, Reavey
note that was my intention.
I hear from my friend Mrs Howe of Boston that she is show
26 April 1937, McGreevy THOMAS McGREEVY
LONDON
26/4/37 Foxrock [Co. Dublin] Dear Tom
Many thanks for your letter. Your descriptions ofO'Faolain &
1
comfortable. The afternoon withJBY was as pleasant as it always
is when one has him to oneself. He had a lovely new swamp - &
sea piece called the Little Waves of Breffni [for Breffny]. He has
five pictures in the Academy, including the boy & horse that I
had the reproduction of and I think 2 quite new ones that I have
2
Jack to the Academy dinner. I saw the Hones with Frank the following Monday. There was a nice misprint in Crampton
3
with my tortuous puff of the Amaranthers. I sent it to you. 4
The Lun;:at is back on the wall in Charlemont House, very
well repaired as far as I can see, but abominably hung, low down
in the long overlit room with the awful J. E. Blanches, in a
corner. I hear Kelly or whatever the curator is called confessed
sadly to Stella Solomons Starkey - ofall people! - to not knowing
5
Frere Reeves were reassuring.
I have been in a daze since returning, very stupid & fairly
notseen. IhavenotbeentotheAcademy. Gogartysaidpublicly he had never seen such a collection of pictures anywhere. Cottie came in later from the Hone watercolours in Waddington's Gallery in Anne Street, very rueful that she couldn't go with
Walker's blurb, Daubingy for Daubigny.
You don't mention having received the Dublin Magazine
agreatdealaboutit. Buthewasreadingitup,hesaid. TheJack Yeats Low Tide, in the Academy I think 2 years ago, and pre sented by Justice Meredith, was being derided by three ladies the
486
ing 2 girls in their nighties astride a roofridge in the moonlight.
26 April 1937, McGreevy
day I was there. There seem to be a number of new AEs, includ
6
The old bitch I was so fond of was destroyed (chloroformed)
last Saturday week, unbeknown to me, while I was at Jack Yeats'.
I was very upset, as I had wanted to be with her at the end, to try
7
&makeitperhapsalittleeasier. Motherwasprostrated,inbed for 2 days after it, and it was very hard work indeed getting her to take a reasonable view of what oneself could not take a reasonable view of. Apart from that she is much the same, with as few really good days as really bad. Frank spends most of his spare time with his girl. He has bought Joyce's Irish Place Names in 3 volumes, knows a lot already about Celtic etymolo gies & has cleaned his paint box. We are going to-morrow to the Exhibition of the Water-Colour Society! 8
I went one day with Cissie to see Boss. He has been moved,
to the new place perched above Rathdrum attached to the
county home, mainly the creation of my good uncle Gerald,
9
run by some Sisters of mercy. There he is more comfortable, and quite simply seven months worse than when I saw him last. I think he knows now he is dying & has given up the idea of ever coming home. I of course can't stimulate him, but when the Liam O'Briens & Seumas O'Sullivans go down he keeps them amused in the old way. Cissie is also a little worse than she was & less than ever able to move about. [. . . ] The son is still in the veldt, chafing to get home. 10
I had half a card from George, announcing another rejec tion. I sent him another copy & he has the two out now, I think
11
487
I have not looked him up, nor Dennis [for Denis] either. I hear Dennis asked Edward Sheehy, the only paid member of staff on Dublin To-Day [for Ireland To-Day] to get me to review his poems.
one with Nelson. He also mentioned Brian had been over.
26 April 1937, McGreevy
It is not a job that I would much relish, though of course I wd. have to execute myself. 12 So far I have heard nothing about it.
I had lunch with Leventhal but do not expect to see much of him. He seems to have made great friends with S. O'Sullivan & Austin Clarke, who has settled over here (Kimmage) now[. . . ] & was seen at the Academy with even more than his melancholy expression. 13
I called once on Ethna Maccarthy but she was not in. The young Pourbus Old Woman was leaning against the wall. 14
I met Joe Hone in the library & he invited me to dine one Saturday evening, which I accepted. Then at the last moment he rang me up and said that his wife said that the Lennox Robinsons, also invited, were enemies of mine & that it would not go! I said I was stupid about such things, ed. never remember who loved me & who hated me & who tolerated me & who did not, and that by all means let it be called up. A couple of nights later I dined, the only guest, and was given a bottle of stout15 [. . •)
Some of the Poussins have gone on loan to Paris, the Cranach to the Kaiser Friedrich and the awful Franz Hals some where else. 16
Nancy Cunard sent me from France Dos Poemas, one by herself & the other by a Spaniard, the usual indignations. 17
Ruddy making a fool of himself in Dublin Mag. , dragging in the memory of his dead wife, the footsteps that do not come, no peace till he rests beside her, etc. , all apropos ofLord de Talby's [for Tabley's] verse. A foul article by Lwellyn [for Llewelyn] Powys on Dr Johnson, making him out a John Bull, the orthodox balls in fact. By the way, I mentioned the Vincent O'Sullivan thing to Joe Hone, who had heard nothing of it & said he wd. very gladly subscribe if he knew to what quarter. 18
488
I like walking more & more, & the less aim the better. I was on the Big Sugarloafon Saturday and yesterday found in a field near Enniskerry a lovely small Celtic cross with still the dim low reliefofa Christ crucified with head duly inclined to the north. Frank wants me to go with him at Whit to Clonmel & walk the Galtees & the Blackstairs & so I will. I should love to see Cashel again. 19
I have been working, in so far as I have been working at all, at the Johnson thing, to find my petition of principle, after many disappointments, more strikingly confirmed than I had dared hope. It seems now quite certain that he was rather absurdly in love with her, all the 15 years he was at Streatham, though there is no text for the impotence. It becomes more interesting - the fake rage to cover his retreat from her, then the real rage when he realises that no retreat was necessary, and beneath both the despair ofthe lover with nothing to love with - and much more difficult. 20 It explains what has never been explained, i. e. his esteem for the imbecile Mr Thrale. 21 The last meeting in 1783, about 6 months before her marriage to Piozzi, a year before his death, has always remained nebulous. He has a briefreference to it in his Meditations. I think that is an interview that must be written, though I should have wished either to keep it all in 1784 or spread it to catch the scene where the Thrales find him on his knees before Dr Delap, praying for a continuance ofhis reason. Arthur Murphy is important, the only one, not excluding Fanny Burney, ofthe Streatham Circle who stuck to Ml"S_ Thrale through the scandal. I think we will have a very quiet Dr Johnson. Perhaps his nigger Frank Barber was the only person he never bellowed at. 22
I read Dujardin's Lauriers . . . and realised how extremely charitable it was in Joyce to invoke him to Larbaud & how very
489
26 April 1937, McGreevy
26 April 1937, McGreevy
modest his proposal that his conception of the monologue was not identical with the model's. Or perhaps it was neither charity
23
cheerful, but I think you are hypersensitive in that connexion.
25
couple of nights, in the bed where I had it the first time almost
exactly 11 years ago, but as little anxiety as then. Perhaps it is
that the phase of impatience with one's own limitations has
nearly exhausted itself. I feel now that I shall meet the most of
my days from now on here and in tolerable content, not feeling
much guilt at making the most of what ease there is to be had
and not bothering very much about effort. After all there
has been an effort. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps, it is
Dr Johnson's dream of happiness, driving rapidly to & from
26
27
1 McGreevy'scommentsaboutSeanO'FaolainandLondonpublishersFrere-Reeves are not known.
2 Jack Yeats wrote to McGreevy on 20 April 1937 that SB had visited the previous Saturday, 17 April (TCD, MS 10381/143).
Yeats's new painting was The Little Waves ofBreffny (private collection, Pyle 495). His paintings in the 108th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts were: Boy and Horse (see 29 January 1936, n. 2), While Grass Grows (Waterford Municipal Art Gallery 76, Pyle 492), A Morning in a City (NGI 1050, Pyle 493), An Evening in Spring (private collection, Pyle 494), and Dancing on the Deck (Waddington Gallery, London, Pyle 443).
490
nor modesty, but simply astuce again.
Alan Thompson's wife bore him a son yesterday.
Your account of the evening with Charles was not very
24
I have not written to him and must do so.
I have had the old internal combustion heart & head a
nowhere in a postchaise with a pretty woman.
Cissie met O'Malley at Grange House & liked him. Write again soon.
Love ever Sam
ALS; 5 leaves. 5 sides; TCD, MS 10402/126.
3 On17April,CottieYeatshadseenanexhibitionofoilsandwatercolorsbyIrish landscape painter Nathaniel Hone (1831-1917) at the Victor Waddington Gallery, 28 South Anne Street, that ran from 13 to 20 April. SB and Frank Beckett saw it on Monday, 19 April. Irish artist John Crampton Walker (1890-1942) prepared the Catalogue of Exhibition of Pictures by the Late Nathaniel Hone RH. A. at Victor Waddington Gallery; in the one-page biographical essay the name of French landscape painter Charles-Fran,;ois Daubigny (1817-1878) is misspelled.
4 SB'sreviewofTheAmaranthers:"AnImaginativeWork! "80-81.
5 The damage to Lur,;at's Decorative Landscape (a hole near the center and several small ones at the side) had been repaired by J. J. Cory's, Picture Restorer, 51 Grafton Street (invoice for repair, 13 August 1935, Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane; see also 5 May 1935, n. 6, and Sunday [22 September 1935], n. 2). John F. Kelly was Curator of the Municipal Gallery of Modem Art from 1 October 1935 to 1954. Stella Solomons Starkey was a good friend of Sarah Purser; Purser, as the leader of the Friends of the National Collections, had been responsible for bringing the painting into the collection.
The paintings by Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942) in the collection at this time included Jeanne and Mischief (Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, no. 294 and no. 293).
6 LowTidebyJackB. Yeatshadbeenshowninthe1935RoyalHibernianAcademy Exhibition; it was bought byJusticeJames Creed Meredith and presented in 1937 to the Municipal Gallery of Modem Art: 5 May 1935, n. 3.
There were thirteen paintings by AE in the collection at this time, many of which were part of the 1904 gift of Hugh Lane; the museum opened in Charlemont House in 1933, and may have rotated the paintings on exhibition, which would explain why the painting to which SB refers, On the Roof Top, Moonlight (Dublin City Museum The Hugh Lane, no. 32), may have been "new" to SB (Patrick Casey, Dublin City Museum The Hugh Lane, 2 June 2006).
7 SBreferstohisdogWolf.
8 Frank'sgirl,JeanVioletWright(1906-1966).
Frank Beckett bought Patrick Weston Joyce, The Origin and History of Irish Names of
Places, 3 vols. (Dublin: Educational Company oflreland; London: Longmans, Green, n. d. [after 19131).
The 83rd Exhibition of The Water Colour Society of Ireland was held at Mills's Hall, Merrion Row, Dublin, April-May 1937.
9 Gerald Paul Gordon Beckett (1888-1950), SB's uncle, was the County Medical Officer for Wicklow. Boss Sinclair had been moved in November 1936 (see 28 November 1937 [for 1936], n. 25).
10 Liam O'Brien (6 Briaine, 1888-1974), Irish Nationalist and Professor of French, University College Galway. The Sinclairs' son, Morris Sinclair, was in South Africa.
11 George Reavey's letter to SB, to which SB's of 13 April is a reply, has not been found; however, Hamish Hamilton wrote to Reavey on 9 April 1937 rejecting Murphy: "Alas, Beckett's book is as obscure as I feared! I don't feel that I can make an offer" (TxU). SB had suggested Nelson as a possible publisher for Murphy, but no
491
26 April 1937, McGreevy
26 April 1937, McGreevy
evidence has been found of the manuscript being submitted to them. Brian Coffey had been in London.
12 SBreferstoDenisDevlin'scollectionofpoemsIntercessions,notyetpublishedby Reavey'sEuropa Press. Irish writerEdward Sheehy (c. 1910-1956) was on the staffof Ireland To-Day, a journal published from June 1936 to March 1938, edited by Frank O'Connor.
