Augustus John (33 page)

You will get this to-morrow morning perhaps – I shall be in the evening at the gare du nord. I would not say goodbye to Leonard. Your Gwen.’
119

It was not simply that Gwen wanted Dorelia to return to Gus, but that she believed Dorelia belonged to the John tribe and that by running away she had contradicted her nature. Her letter, and the others she wrote over this period, are remarkable for their fundamentalist attitude to Dorelia’s future. Hers was no ordinary religion, it was the religion of love for art’s sake. Were not art and religious experience much the same thing? Was not Dorelia an idol in the Temple of Art, a rare
femme inspiratrice
?

But it is Gwen’s tone of didactic certainty that is so remarkable. The other side of this moral conviction was a callousness that shows itself in her attitude to Leonard – ‘what more can he expect?’

Gwen took over and organized everything. Augustus’s absence from the battlefield of negotiations avoided any hint of a sexual tug-of-war, of a man-versus-man contest. Nor was Gwen acting for herself. Was she not surrendering Dorelia to Gus and Ida?

If Dorelia was subject to anyone’s will, it must have been Gwen’s, whose hard queer intimate company she had kept over the last eight months, and who, alone of all the John tribe, knew Leonard. The timing of her first letter, too, was good: no appeal until Ida’s sanction had been obtained. Finally, Gwen called upon the one strain stronger than any other in Dorelia’s character, one that Gwen understood well: her sense of destiny. There was only one weakness in Gwen’s position, and that was inevitable: while she could only send ‘weak words’ on pieces of paper, Leonard was actually with Dorelia. It was to be her words against his presence. But what she could do to offset this disadvantage she did, recommending Dorelia to tell Leonard nothing, to leave him in the same secret way as she had left Paris. For this too was in Dorelia’s character, and to have a weakness recommended as one’s duty can be irresistible.

When Gwen went to the Gare du Nord the following evening to meet her, Dorelia was not there. But she had sent a letter. To go back, she wrote, would be to curtail her freedom. With Leonard she was free of the overwhelming passions of Gus and Gwen, who together so excited and exhausted her. ‘God, I’m tired of being weak, of depending on people, of being dragged this way & that by my feelings, of listening to everybody but myself. I must be free –
I will be.
I wonder if you will understand… I am afraid you will not understand. Gussie will perhaps, he knows me, how I am.’
120

Like the other Gwen, Gwen Salmond, who was soon to liberate Matthew Smith from nervous paralysis and fill him with confidence in his artistic talent, Dorelia believed in her possession of a vicarious ability that was the special gift of some women, perhaps even some men. She had served Gwen John, but her relationship with Augustus entangled her in Ida’s peculiar destiny. Besides, she did not want to be a slave to this gift, and sensed the danger of her love for Gus and Gwen – that it would devour and damage others. ‘You must know that I love you all – I cannot say how much,’ she replied to Gwen. ‘You say I must be unselfish and brave. I must, but not in the way you mean...

‘Whatever I do there must be something false; let me choose the least false, the most natural, let me? If I loved Gussie & you & Ida twenty times more – though I cannot love you more than I do – I would not come back… I see how wonderful it would be – it cannot be.’

All this, Dorelia felt, ‘must sound horrible to you but I must write it’. It was essential that she resist the potent spell of these Johns. Gwen had written her letter in ‘an ecstasy’: it was not reasonable; it was not practicable. Whatever happened, she concluded, Gwen must not seek her out in Bruges: ‘it would be useless.’
121

If Gwen had not won as easily as she appears to have expected, she already sensed victory. Dorelia had asked for her permission, and she refused to give it. In her answer she brushed aside all these objections. She understood Dorelia’s position, Dorelia did not understand hers. She returned to the attack, reiterating and elaborating her previous arguments. ‘I must speak plainly for you to know everything before you choose. Leonard cannot help you, he would have to know Gussie for that and Ida and you a long, long time, he never could understand unless he was our brother or a great genius.

Strength and weakness, selfishness and unselfishness are only words – our work in life was to develop ourselves and so fulfil our destiny. And
when we do this we are of use in the world, then
only
can we help our friends and develop them. I
know
that Gussie and Ida are more parts of you than Leonard is for ever. When you leave him you will perhaps make a great character of him – if he has faith in you that you are acting according to your truest self – and what good could you do him if he had no faith in you – by being always with him? But faith or no faith he would know some day the truth – and that is the highest good that can happen to us. To ‘wholly develop’ a man is nonsense – all events help to do that. I know as certainly as the day follows the night that you would develop him and all your friends as far as one human being can another by
being yourself. That is what you have to think of
,
Dorelia. To do this is hard – that is what I meant by saying you must be brave and strong. I am sorry for people who suffer but that is how we learn all we know nearly – and that is the great happiness – knowledge of the truth!

You know you are Gussy’s as well as I do. Did you do wisely in going away like that without telling him? Do you dare spend a week with him or a day, or a few hours? Forgive me for speaking like this darling Dorelia – I only want to help you to know yourself. I love you so much that if I never saw you again and knew you were happy I should be happy too… It makes it simple to know all we have to do is to be true to the feelings that have been ours longest and most consistently.’
122

While Gwen was writing this to Dorelia, Leonard had posted an answer to her first letter which, disobeying Gwen’s instructions, Dorelia had shown him. ‘Leonard has written to you too,’ Dorelia informed Gwen, ‘ – do not think he has influenced me.’ Written in halting English, by now partly indecipherable, it is couched as a rebuke yet struggles to maintain a sense of fairness in grappling with Gwen’s philosophy:

‘Dear Miss John,

Dorelia got your letter to-day and showed it to me. Your letter forces me to explain to you several things you forgot, as well as I can do.

Of course you don’t know me neither do you know my sentiments to Dor; but this is the other side of the facts, at which you did not like to look, anyway it exists and it is as true as your words, if I allow myself to talk a little bit of myself.

You say L. has had his happiness for a time, what more can he expect? Do you really think… that Dorelia’s feelings are small enough to love a man like this? People like me don’t love often and a woman like Dorelia will not pass my way again; you would better understand, if you would know my life.

Your letter is full of love, the love of a woman for another one, now
imagine mine if you can. I am no ordinary man as you may think, who loves a girl because she is beautiful or whatever. I tell you and you are Dory’s friend so you must understand it, I am an artist and cannot live without her and I will not live without her – I think this is clear. Very right if you say “it is the greatest crime to take with intention anyone’s happiness”. You might say as you did I had my hapiness. Do you think hapiness is a thing that you take like café after dinner, a thing that you enjoy a few times and something you can get sick of? Not my hapiness by God; I suffered enough before and I don’t let escape something from me that I created myself with all my love and all my strength. Well, all those words are only an answer to yours, but something else that you forgot.

We cannot force the fate to go our ways, fate forces us...

That’s all I have to tell you, compare now my fate with that of John and his family perhaps you will see where it is heavier. My words seem hard to you, but they are the expression of my feelings as well as I can say it. I think it is not necessary to talk about Dorelias feelings and thoughts. I did
not
tell her what to do, I told her she might do what she thinks right and naturel, but remember your words of the crime and think that there are greater crimes which are against the rules of nature.

If you want wright to me your thoughts about everything and dont get mad against me, you must see that there is no world that [is] absolutely right.’
123

Wisely Gwen did not accept this invitation to write to Leonard. She was not interested in a discussion of ‘thoughts about everything’, but in outcomes; not in fairness, but rightness. Leonard’s letter arrived in Paris before Gwen had posted her second letter to Dorelia, so she slipped into the envelope an extra pitiless page deflecting his arguments to her own ends. What he had written disappointed her, she claimed, and made her ‘more certain if certainty can be more certain of everything I have told you’. Leonard’s love was, after all, nothing better than possessiveness. She had supposed it to have been finer – perhaps he’d climb to better things in time, given the adversity. He loved her of course, no one denied that. But his love was selfish, like that of the Pebble of the brook in Blake’s
The Clod and the Pebble,
while Augustus’s, ‘much more noble’, resembled the little Clod of Clay’s.
124
For, whatever his faults, Augustus was an artist; while Leonard was still a part of the bourgeoisie.

‘I have just read Leonard’s letter. In self-justification I must answer a few things to you. I don’t know what he thinks I mean – he does not understand certainly… He says “you are not free anymore you are his,
his body and soul”. He says there are greater crimes than breaking another’s happiness that is to do things against the rules of nature.

He limits the laws of nature. You are bound to those whom you are in sympathy by laws much stronger than the most apparent ones. The laws of nature are infinite and some are so delicate they have no names but they are strong. We are more than intellectual and animal beings we are spiritual also. Men don’t know this so well as women, and I am older than Leonard.

He said “I
could
not live without her and
will not
live without her – this is clear.” Well a man who talks like that ought to be left to walk and stand and work alone – by every woman. Only when he can will he do good work.’
125

Gwen’s shock tactics exploded powerful doubts within Dorelia. And to Gwen’s philosophy were now added Augustus’s poetry, and letters of entreaty from Ida. Ida had already dispatched Augustus back to the front line of combat in Paris so that, when the critical moment came, he could advance upon Bruges with all haste. ‘Aurevoir,’ she wrote to him, ‘and don’t come here again alone. Mrs Dorel Harem must be with you.’

From Dorelia herself little or nothing was heard. She was floundering, quietly, hopelessly and without comment. Then, suddenly, she capitulated. ‘I have given in and am going back with Gus soon,’ she wrote to Gwen. How and when she was going back were still uncertain; hers was a conditional surrender of which no one quite knew the conditions. It was now that Augustus decided to move from France into Belgium, while from further back, the John artillery still kept up its hail of letters. Ida was insistent that Dorelia should return, not simply to England, but to Elm House itself. The three of them must live together in Augustus’s ‘wonderful concubinage’. This would be infinitely preferable to a dreary segregation, with its periodic loneliness, dullness, incompleteness – almost respectability. If Dorelia were elsewhere, Ida could never be sure what Augustus would do. This at least was part of her reason for welcoming Dorelia into the home. But the prospect of it also curiously excited her. She had begun to identify her feelings for Dorelia with Gwen’s, and to suspect that in some extraordinary way she loved her too. ‘Darling Dorel,’ she wrote:

‘Please do not forget that you are coming back – or get spirited away before – as I should certainly hang myself in an apple tree. Whenever I write to you I think you will be annoyed or bored – I seem to have written so often and said the same thing. But for the last time O my honey let me say it – I
crave
for you to come here. I don’t expect you will and I
don’t want you to if – well if you don’t. But I do want you to understand it is all I want. I now feel incomplete and thirsty without you. I don’t know why – and in all probability I shall have to continue so – as of course it will probably be impractical or something and naturally there are your people – and Gus will want you to be in town.

But I want you to know how it is Mrs Harem – only you needn’t come for 10 days as I am curing freckles on my face and shall be hideous until I blossom out afresh.

I heard from Gwen “Dorelia writes she has given in”. Were you then holding out against Gus, you little bitch? You are a mystery, but you are ours. I don’t know if I love you for your own sake or for his. Aurevoir -I wish I could help that Leonard. It is so sad.’

It seems probable that Leonard still did not know what was happening. Dorelia kept everything secret – in a sense even from herself. She put herself in the path of the greatest current of energy, and let events take their course. Augustus by this time had reached Antwerp where he halted, expecting some news. ‘I am getting to know every stone of Antwerp,’ he complained.

‘…The Devil keeps you away from me Ardor McNeill. Sometimes I talk to you while walking along and laugh so heartily all the people stare. All night I have strange dreams… You have only written once and how many letters I have sent you. You make me feel like Jesus Christ sometimes. I sit and sip and call for paper and ink… I think of the portrait I shall paint of you – there is a painting here by Rembrandt of little Saskia – a wondrous work – it is the repository of the inmost secret in the heart of a great artist. It is like the Cathedral here only more intimate more personal more subtle. In it is the principle of man’s love of woman. You call me pirino – beloved, but do you love me enough… Beloved Beloved your hands are laid on my head and everything fades… Ardor thou sylph with a secret for me let me hear you breathe. Gustavus.’
126