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.
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.
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
Blitz
CLIFFORD HALL'S JOURNAL ~ 1939 - 1942 P18
including letters written to his wife Marion and some other correspondence
Connie, that was the fat woman in black who brought the veal, was in charge of the refreshments and worked very hard. "If you make the drinks too weak, they say you are mean, and if you make 'em too strong they say they are doped. It's a difficult life." She continually referred to Lady Schwabe, the organizer, as a "mean old bitch" but when the share took place the following morning and Connie received five pounds the old bitch was kissed and hugged and became "my darling."
Once or twice I had a peep through the serving hatch but I could barely see across the room for tobacco smoke. Once Connie rushed out with the wastepaper basket, used as an ashtray, in flames. I put it under the tap.
I went to bed at 11.30. At 8.15 the next morning I left for the Depot. Play was still going on; the shutters closed and the electric light burning. Outside the sun was shining, the sky very blue and the trees very green. An unshaven ghastly looking taxi driver was creeping slowly round his cab, rubbing up the brass work as if he did not care much whether it looked bright or not. He had been waiting outside all night.
Later in the day I saw Bill. He was present at the reckoning up about 9.30, after the last player had left. Bill got some extra, the croupier's share was £17, and M'lady cleared £130! Seems lazy. There were no suicides but there was an amusing sequel, and typical of the things that happen to Bill. The man, when cleaning up after the party, found one of the bone counters that someone had dropped on the floor. He handed it to Bill. Bill mentioned to his raid warden lodger. This is the bloke who had put him in touch with Lady Schwabe. The warden immediately asked for the counter because he could sell it. He presented Bill with a pound next evening. He had sold it for two, so he said. So, someone is going to get part of their own back. The counter was marked £5!
That's about all there was to the party* as far as I was concerned. It is certainly the way to make money.
I hope you will be able to see me next week. I saw Stanley and Harry last night.
Lots of love to you and Julian.
Clifford
* It can be deduced from this letter, that on the evening of June 16, 1941, Bill and Clifford somehow managed to gain access to premises where an illegal gambling party, organized by a certain Lady Violet Schwabe, a "well-known society woman", was being held. Lady Schwabe was subsequently arrested for holding a similar event in April 1943. See: London Society Woman Fined £100 For Organising Expensive Gambling Game.
21 June, 1941
Dearest Mog,
Very glad to get your letter. I expect you have had mine by now. I do hope you will be able to come on Thursday. I wanted to send you the fare but I have not got any more money in yet, although I have £5 owing still from Leger and more from other people. But I will make it up to you as soon as I can.
There is no chance of getting any leave yet, although I am getting more and more tired and exasperated with this wretched job.
Thursday I was shovelling some debris out of the lorry into a barge. This morning helping to shore up a house. All very stupid and ruins my touch when I come to paint the next day. My touch has been utterly lifeless this week. Horrible and feeble. However, once again, one is worse off in the army. How I approve of Cezanne's attitude during 1870. He said he was a painter and the war was no affair of his and he managed to keep on working in the South, although they nearly caught him once or twice. No one thinks any the worse of him now. Unfortunately, it's quite impossible to do that this time. The thing is far too vast to grab us all, more or less.
Let me know about Thursday and I will come and meet you. I suppose you will come by the same train. Gets in about twelve, doesn't it?
Looking forward very very much to seeing you again.
Love to you and Julian
Clifford
5 July, 1941
My dearest Mog,
Many thanks for your letter. I am so sorry Julian isn't well but I expect he will soon be all right again. I tried every chemist along the King's Road for your mascara and enclosed is the only thing I could find. Rimmels has been bombed and there is no other make obtainable. This is the chemist's own make and looks too hard to me, but you may be able to do something with it. Perhaps gently warming it or a drop of olive oil if spit fails!
I was glad you enjoyed Madox Ford's book. I liked it immensely and admire his point of view, so calm and self-contained. I felt, in comparison, like a feather just blown about by every little breeze. Not quite so bad as that perhaps for I have a certain tenacity, but it's difficult at times when I am tired and I feel sure it is more difficult than ever to retain a point of view. I could if only I had all my energy and time to give to it.
I do wish you could come up again soon, it's a damned nuisance that girl going back to London, and silly of her too for we are not through with the raids yet I fear. But perhaps you will be able to get someone in her place. But I will be able to come for a few days at the end of this month. Mother is coming home on Tuesday and I am going to meet her. I will be glad when all the luggage is disposed of - I told you she had enough for a year's stay. I will phone Stanley next week to see if he brought the pictures back from Pearl. If he did shall I bring the to you when I come? And how is our Guys? It is a lovely thing.
Lots of love to you and Julian,
Clifford
10 July, 1941
Dearest Mog,
Very glad to hear from you and to know that Julian is better. I wish I could send you some more money but here is a little to put towards the doctor's bill. Will send the other on Saturday. I should certainly get the shoes you want now the bill is paid. I will send you something towards the cost from time to time. I have money coming only it's so slow. And get the 49/6 ones if you like them best. Might just as well owe them that as 37/6. It won't hurt them.
I hope to be able to come and see you at the end of July, and there is a good chance of getting a whole week.
I feel fairly well and look marvellous. Having a rotten time with teeth. Six stopped. Tired as usual, but enjoying the weather.
My picture of the pansy is going well, however, although two hours painting seems to wear me out. I haven't done much else, working at a 36 x 28 and a few sketches of boxers, but very slight.
Mother came back on Tuesday. She looks very well but had decided that the climate of Boscombe did not suit her! I think she wanted to be back in her own place and was bored with Dorothy and dismal Freddy is not exactly a cheerful person to have hanging around.
I have written thousands and thousands of words lately - at the Depot. I must occupy myself somehow. Bits of it are fairly good.
I have at last got you the paper you wanted for your cards. The last five sheets, imperial, they had and no chance of getting anymore. Shall I send it, or bring it at the end of the month?
Won't it be lovely to have another week with you.
Lots of love to you both,
Clifford
Journal Entries
July 22, 1941
She was standing in front of the glass, brushing her hair. 'You should have a maid to brush your hair,' I said. 'And who would brush the maid's hair?' she replied.
July 26, 1941
Tonight I realized that understanding was only possible when one had succeeded in getting rid of all prejudices. And I saw then that a Utopia on earth, even a Heaven, could exist. Things I had once scoffed at as utterly impossible.
Stay still, and all you need, all you wish for will come to you.
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.
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.
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.
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
Front page of the Leger Gallery's catalogue for "Bombs On Chelsea" - Exhibition of War Drawings by Clifford Hall, May 10 - May 31 1941.
Clifford Hall, possibly at the Leger Gallery, showing one of his drawings - 'Where They Lived' - to a fellow ARP man.
Letters to Marion
6 June, 1941
My dear Mog,
Thank you so much for both your letters. I got the one with the handkerchief - the other things can wait until next Thursday. Send the photo soon and don't forget the cycle clips. I feel better and am longing to see you. Here is some money for your fare and something for P.J. or something else.
I did a nice oil last Monday and I am starting a larger one next week. Things are pretty quiet although we had two raids this morning - nothing serious though.
Lots of love to you and Julian. I am glad he still remembers me. I will have the stuff from the chemists for you when you come.
Clifford
14 June, 1941
Dearest Mog,
Come and see me again the week after next. I was very happy with you yesterday and I love you very very much.
It is wonderful to feel one is having a love affair with one's wife. It's exciting and you are perfect.
Write soon,
Clifford
Journal Entry
16 June, 1941
Last night before going to bed I went out into the grounds of St Marks thinking of Paris and those days before the War. The mass of trees were perfect against the night sky and above them shone the sickle moon. A few yards from me a group of men stood debating whether they should sleep out of doors that night, for it was very warm. One of them struck a match to light his cigarette and for a moment the circle of faces was illuminated with a warm glowing light as the group became a significant part of the scene. The warm light on their faces was a compliment to the cold light of the moon, with the mysterious clump of trees in between.
Letters to Marion
17 June, 1941
Dearest Mog,
Thank you so much for your letter, and I was very happy that you enjoyed yourself because I did too - wonderfully. I got the photograph of the rocks.
Last Thursday evening was quite amazing. Bill and I were in the kitchen. The tough woman you saw was in and out serving plates of cold veal and salad, fruit and cream, drinks and coffee. We were both presented with excellent meals and several huge shots of whiskey.
Now and again one of the players wandered out from the front room. I remember a rather stupid officer in khaki and a pale thin middle-aged woman who had several glasses of champagne. She assured us vaguely that life was so utterly boring and that she could not gamble until she was slightly drunk. The champagne and gin and tonic she took seemed to have no effect. She remained pale, languid and terribly bored.