started to applaud as I left.
[NOTE IN RETROSPECT. 1966. More and more I’m convinced that this blond young man was in fact Evelyn Waugh. 9 ]
Tuesday, 21 July
Up to Hampstead today to meet Land and her family. I feel a little apprehensive, never having met a famous painter before (her father is Vernon Fothergill RA, celebrated for his vivid English landscapes painted in the style of Les Fauves). I’m also worried about what to wear. Mother suggested my ‘beautiful tweed’, but it’s too hot for tweeds. I wish I had a cotton drill suit — but I can’t possibly go out and buy one now. Could I send Baker out to Harrods or the Army & Navy and see what he could pick up? Ridiculous. I bought so many clothes last year surely I can find something suitable.
Later. As it turned out I wore a blazer with some fawn bags, a striped shirt and a bow tie (Abbey First XV). Land opened the door and laughed: she said I looked like a travelling salesman on his day off. Very comical, I said, managing a sardonic chuckle, but I did feel overdressed. She was wearing a smock-blouse thing and knickerbockers. Her feet were bare. She led me through the house to the rear terrace with a big fig tree that overlooked sloping lawns, the heath and, beyond, the vast and blurry city, hazed by the noon light. A table was set under the fig and the whole scene looked entrancing. Three or four dogs of indeterminate breed lolled about.
Her father was in his studio with a friend, she said, as she poured me a cider cup. Her mother and her brother, Hugh, would be joining us, and possibly some others. ‘It’s always open house at luncheon here,’ she said, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. The house was large and rambling, not very old, Arts and Crafts, I would say, with faux Tudor affectations — tall spiralled brick chimneys, leaded lights, and inside exposed beams and a minstrel’s gallery in the big drawing room. The place was full of pictures and odd pieces of well-worn furniture. Very lived-in. I loved it, of course. The antithesis of Sumner Place.
Hugh Fothergill, brother, arrived wearing a brilliant scarlet shirt and no tie. He’s rangy, thin, with wild hair and a jutting jaw. He’s just finished medical school so must be twenty-five or twenty-six. Within minutes of our being introduced he told me he was a socialist. Mrs Fothergill (‘Call me Ursula’) was also tall — and faintly aloof, as if lost in her thoughts, only giving the present company 75 per cent of her attention. Then old Vernon appeared — stout and florid — looking more like a publican than a painter. With him was the friend called Henry Lamb, 10 I think, a fellow artist. At lunch Lamb asked me if I knew Lady Ottoline Morrell and whether I’d been out to Garsington. 11 Land said, ‘I don’t think Logan would approve of Garsington.’ I couldn’t think why she made this judgement and remained silent. Lamb looked at me a bit askance after that, as if I were some sort of stuffed-shirt. She can be infuriating, Land. We ate cold roast beef, horseradish, salads, with a choice of wine or beer. To show how unstuffed-shirt I was, I drank beer.
After lunch Land and I took two of the dogs and went for a walk on the heath. We sat on the grass in the shade of a tree and smoked a cigarette. At one stage she lay back and spread her arms and I think she was expecting me to kiss her — but somehow I had lost my nerve. The day had proved too overwhelming; I was too disconcerted by her family.
So I said, ‘Why wouldn’t I like Garsington? I should think I’d love it.’
‘Oh no you wouldn’t. Whatever else you may be, Logan, you’re not a snob.’
‘How do you know I’m not a snob?’
She looked at me in her familiar fixed way. ‘I can tell. I abominate snobbery. I would never have asked you to lunch if I’d suspected for one second.’
‘I think I might be an intellectual snob,’ I said.
‘Well, that’s forgivable. That’s
[NOTE IN RETROSPECT. 1966. More and more I’m convinced that this blond young man was in fact Evelyn Waugh. 9 ]
Tuesday, 21 July
Up to Hampstead today to meet Land and her family. I feel a little apprehensive, never having met a famous painter before (her father is Vernon Fothergill RA, celebrated for his vivid English landscapes painted in the style of Les Fauves). I’m also worried about what to wear. Mother suggested my ‘beautiful tweed’, but it’s too hot for tweeds. I wish I had a cotton drill suit — but I can’t possibly go out and buy one now. Could I send Baker out to Harrods or the Army & Navy and see what he could pick up? Ridiculous. I bought so many clothes last year surely I can find something suitable.
Later. As it turned out I wore a blazer with some fawn bags, a striped shirt and a bow tie (Abbey First XV). Land opened the door and laughed: she said I looked like a travelling salesman on his day off. Very comical, I said, managing a sardonic chuckle, but I did feel overdressed. She was wearing a smock-blouse thing and knickerbockers. Her feet were bare. She led me through the house to the rear terrace with a big fig tree that overlooked sloping lawns, the heath and, beyond, the vast and blurry city, hazed by the noon light. A table was set under the fig and the whole scene looked entrancing. Three or four dogs of indeterminate breed lolled about.
Her father was in his studio with a friend, she said, as she poured me a cider cup. Her mother and her brother, Hugh, would be joining us, and possibly some others. ‘It’s always open house at luncheon here,’ she said, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. The house was large and rambling, not very old, Arts and Crafts, I would say, with faux Tudor affectations — tall spiralled brick chimneys, leaded lights, and inside exposed beams and a minstrel’s gallery in the big drawing room. The place was full of pictures and odd pieces of well-worn furniture. Very lived-in. I loved it, of course. The antithesis of Sumner Place.
Hugh Fothergill, brother, arrived wearing a brilliant scarlet shirt and no tie. He’s rangy, thin, with wild hair and a jutting jaw. He’s just finished medical school so must be twenty-five or twenty-six. Within minutes of our being introduced he told me he was a socialist. Mrs Fothergill (‘Call me Ursula’) was also tall — and faintly aloof, as if lost in her thoughts, only giving the present company 75 per cent of her attention. Then old Vernon appeared — stout and florid — looking more like a publican than a painter. With him was the friend called Henry Lamb, 10 I think, a fellow artist. At lunch Lamb asked me if I knew Lady Ottoline Morrell and whether I’d been out to Garsington. 11 Land said, ‘I don’t think Logan would approve of Garsington.’ I couldn’t think why she made this judgement and remained silent. Lamb looked at me a bit askance after that, as if I were some sort of stuffed-shirt. She can be infuriating, Land. We ate cold roast beef, horseradish, salads, with a choice of wine or beer. To show how unstuffed-shirt I was, I drank beer.
After lunch Land and I took two of the dogs and went for a walk on the heath. We sat on the grass in the shade of a tree and smoked a cigarette. At one stage she lay back and spread her arms and I think she was expecting me to kiss her — but somehow I had lost my nerve. The day had proved too overwhelming; I was too disconcerted by her family.
So I said, ‘Why wouldn’t I like Garsington? I should think I’d love it.’
‘Oh no you wouldn’t. Whatever else you may be, Logan, you’re not a snob.’
‘How do you know I’m not a snob?’
She looked at me in her familiar fixed way. ‘I can tell. I abominate snobbery. I would never have asked you to lunch if I’d suspected for one second.’
‘I think I might be an intellectual snob,’ I said.
‘Well, that’s forgivable. That’s
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