6.1: Career: defining my future

It was virtually impossible to obtain a hotel room in London over the period of the Coronation, but Caroline had told me that she could put me up at 90 Eaton Terrace, provided that I was happy to sleep on the floor of David’s study. Her spare rooms were already promised to others. In fact Daphne and Xan were there briefly when I first arrived, on the point of departing for France, where we made plans to meet up after I had returned to Paris.

Caroline told me how she and David had been disconcerted, about a week ago, to return home one evening to discover that someone had delivered a consignment of about thirty paintings while they were out - without there being any message of explanation. It was only later that Bendor had come back to explain how he had been doing me a favour in transporting the load back to Britain, and to deliver them to this address - from which I would be collecting them in due course. The paintings had originally been spread all round their drawing-room; and David had promptly surmised that someone was playing a practical joke on them. Inasmuch that David was now one of the directors of the Marlborough Gallery, it was hardly encouraging that he should have jumped to such a conclusion - nor tactful that they should be telling me. But I took all that in my stride.

My anticipation that the Coronation was going to be an exciting event was never fulfilled. As far as I was concerned, it went off like a damp squib - with me sitting there in the rain, all on my own, occupying a seat in the stand near Westminster Abbey, for which Henry had passed on to me his supplementary ticket. It was especially so that he might attend the Coronation ceremony that he had finally decided to take up his seat in the House of Lords. And having done so, he went into the ordeal with a certain panache - having the family coach transported up to London, so that he could drive up to the Abbey in style - but unaccompanied, since he was still officially unwed, in the aftermath of his divorce. He told me later that he felt petrified during the coach ride, convinced that everyone was enquiring whom it could be who was putting on such airs. But my own attention must have been fixed upon others when he arrived, since I never caught a glimpse of him. The fiasco - from my own viewpoint - was that it was only the procession which arrived at the Abbey that filed in front of the stand where I had my seat. The real procession, after the Coronation service had ended, took off from the Abbey in a different direction. So I saw none of that. All that I could do was to sit there in the rain, listening to the account I heard upon a portable radio. And it was a fair distance that I had travelled to see just that.

It was all so much of an anticlimax, and I felt indignant that some friends from Eton - like Dickon Lumley who, as the eldest son of the Earl of Scarborough, was less eligible than myself - should have been there inside the Abbey, as an usher, because his father had taken the trouble to put down his name on the list of applicants before the time limit expired. But then Henry had never been quick off the mark in such matters. And it had never occurred to myself to suggest it.

All this business of regarding it almost as a duty to turn up for the Coronation had been something that gave rise to a few discreet smiles, as far as Lita and her friends were concerned. From the South American point of view, it was all so typically British - this reverence for an hereditary monarch. I had noticed how they were making comments like: "You must feel that you are tremendously lucky, to have such a beautiful queen on your throne!" And their mirth was contained within my efforts to treat the statement seriously.

And there had been that occasion when the [A] girls had enquired whether I regarded myself as a Royalist. So I suppose that there must have been something of that attitude which was apparent to a foreigner. But the real question must be the extent to which I saw myself that way. And the truth of the matter is that I did not. Or to put it another way, it may well be that there were others - the royal family in particular, and those who organized their lives for them - people like the old Duke of Beaufort - who might well have regarded me at this time as the kind of person whom they were hoping to attract into the courtiers’ circle, so that I would adopt it as my own profession. My grandfather Thomas had, after all, been very much the representative of the monarchy within the various counties of the West Country - as Beaufort’s predecessor. And Henry had been tried out within that line of profession, until he lost the favour of the Prince of Wales. But the rôle of courtier had never featured upon the list of careers that I bore in mind. The required subordination to the royal will never did appeal to me as a life-prospect.

At this point in time however, I still featured prominently upon the list of young aristocrats who received regular invitations to attend royal functions. During this particular visit back home, I turned up for the Coronation ball at Buckingham Palace, and I was there at the garden-party too. A beautifully spectacular event on this occasion, in that there were so many African chiefs and their wives in attendance. Their robes and their umbrellas were truly resplendent in their variety of colour. Being a mere Britisher, I looked so drab by comparison, wearing a morning coat by way of traditional uniform. I regarded such attendance almost as by the right of birth. But at the same time I knew in my heart that I was shifting outside from that particular orbit.

Something of far greater personal significance to my life, which was currently being drawn up by our respective lawyers was the breaking of the family entail. I had only just reached the age when it was permissible for us to open such negotiations, and it was required by law that I should be separately represented. The general scheme had now been defined, so I was summoned to discuss the matter with the lawyer who was working on my own behalf. He explained that the general idea was that I should receive a large portion of the family’s capital investments, along with the outer bulk of the Longleat estate - most of which would remain strictly within the family entail - in return for releasing a large portion of investments from the entail, (some of which had already been squandered in tasks like the dredging of the lakes,) for Henry now to spend the rest as he might see fit. And Henry would keep under his own control the inner core of Longleat in its surrounding park, to continue running the touristic industry which he had created. But Cheddar caves would be amongst the properties transferred to myself. And it should be noted that Cheddar had always been the principal source of revenue for the Longleat estate.

What my lawyer needed to know was whether I approved of the scheme as it had so far been negotiated, and whether I wished him to take a stronger line over the ownership of the chattels. My feeling was that I didn’t want to seem greedy. I asked him whether or not he regarded it as being in my interest to agree to the scheme as it stood. He said yes, but that it was even more in my father’s interests than in my own. I could hold out for a tougher bargain if I wanted to. But I had to bear in mind that this scheme would at least save me from having to pay any death duties, provided that he was still alive after a period of five years. And it certainly wouldn’t be comfortable for me if, with the matter unresolved, he were to oblige me to live without any financial support until the day he died - when the entailed property and investments would all come to me, after the payment of crippling death duties. I told him that I would accept the terms which he had negotiated, without requiring him to tighten up the clauses with regard to the ownership of the chattels. Something that I was to regret much later on in life!

The way Henry himself saw it was different. He told me that his own lawyer, Sir Leslie Farrer, had indicated that there was no real need for him to hand over Cheddar caves to me at this stage in life, despite the fact that my lawyers were insisting upon it - their argument being that it wasn’t worth my while to accept the transfer of the unprofitable portions of the estate, unless the gift were to be sweetened with something that really did make money. It should also be recalled that I might find myself having to pay crippling death duties on the transfer of such a remunerative business concern, if we waited until a later date. Henry indicated that he had taken it upon himself to allow the transfer. But he held that we had a gentlemen’s agreement between us that I wouldn’t deny him funds for the promotion of Longleat and its estate, from out of the Cheddar reserves, if ever he found that he needed them. It was stated as if this was all a part of the official deal, when I was to learn later that Farrer had told him quite bluntly that such under-the-table clauses could in no way be part of the negotiated contract. But at this particular point in time, I imagined that they were, and I was certainly encouraged in this belief by Henry.

Of the two particular intentions with regard to my future, which had formerly been controversial, both were now accepted without any need for further contention. That is to say, we all agreed that the next phase in my life was to be a spell of higher education at Oxford. And it was now agreed that I should move into the Dowager suite at Longleat, just as soon as Henry and Virginia got married and took up their abode at Job’s Mill. All of this was due to take place before my eventual return to Britain, after this next spell in Paris.

But the question of my future career was still highly controversial. Henry had never really encouraged me on the idea of joining the Foreign Office - on the grounds that there wasn’t much money in it, even if I were to rise high in the profession. And I think that I must have been retreating from the idea myself, in that I had refrained from asserting that this was my ambition when staying for that week-end at Chantilly, in the company of no less a mortal than the British Ambassador to France, Lord Norwich - or Duff Cooper, as he still preferred to be called, having built up his reputation both as a diplomat and as an author under the latter name. He had in fact enquired after dinner, when the ladies had withdrawn from the dining-table, as to what I might intend to do with my life. And I had told him that I expected to paint and to write. And I daresay that I told him about the novel that I was currently writing.

He told me that, at this comparatively early age, since the essential thing was to keep an accurate record of my life. I should start a journal. He told me how, in his own autobiographical endeavours, he had found that the task had been enormously facilitated by the existence of a journal. The periods when he had been keeping one sprang far more vividly to life than the periods when such effort had lapsed. No matter what the purpose that I might eventually bring to my literary endeavours, the best way now for me to be exercising such talent was in keeping a personal record of the life that I was living, and of the problems that I perceived emerging in it. I had taken good note of all that he was saying, deciding already that I should start such a journal on going up to Oxford. During this present phase, I felt that I had too much on my plate, to contend with any additional material. For I was still involved in my revision of The Millions and the Mansions.

The revision was a slow and tedious chore, and I never had my heart in it. But I was very much taken up by the idea that I was making fast progress as an artist, so it was important that I should sort out the necessary arrangements for a return to Paris, once my agenda here in Britain had been completed.

I had already taken the decision that I should not be returning as a lodger with the [A] family. This was in no way because I had fallen out with them, but I needed greater liberty of spirit than was possible when required to blend in my life with anyone’s family routine. I needed greater independence. Mme [A] had in fact broached the subject herself as to whether I might be intending to return to them - expressing the hope that I would. She explained how the friction between Jocelyn and Eughien necessitated that she should ask him to find lodgings elsewhere, but it would render her task of telling him that he must leave to be that much easier, if she could point out that, while my room would still be occupied by myself, his own room was promised to some Swedish girl. So I had then explained to her how I had to find lodgings on my own - ostensibly to be nearer to my places of work, which were all on the Left Bank. She had accepted that this was sensible, so all was amicable to the very end.

My immediate task now that I was back in Britain was to secure the financial basis for me to continue as an art student in Paris. Already I’d seen the problem of making ends meet when relying upon the minimal allowance that tourists were allowed to take abroad with them at that time. Henry had obtained permission to transfer the monthly sum of £40 to Mme [A]’s account, to cover my lodging fees, but the rest of my living expenses had to come out of the travel allowance that was legally permitted for tourism - which had just been raised to the figure of £40 per annum. And if I were required to use this to cover whatever lodgings I might now find for myself, then I would indeed feel impoverished.

What I needed was a student’s grant, or at least some manner of official recognition that I was a serious art student, which would entitle me to transfer further sums of my own money to cover such expenses as that manner of life might warrant. But it wasn’t so easy as it might sound. When I approached the Bank of England on this subject, I was asked to come in and discuss the matter; and I found that they were treating me with the utmost suspicion. They were too well accustomed, I expect, to receiving applications for additional foreign currency on trumped up pretexts which had to be refused. This claim that I was a serious art student required documentary backing. I hadn’t seen fit to take art as one of my subjects for the School Certificate. It wasn’t even as if I had been recommended for a course in Paris from some British art-school. So I was advised to obtain some authentication of my claim from the Headmaster at Eton, before reapplying for such a grant.

I promptly wrote a letter to Mr Birley requesting such backing, but he in turn demanded that I should send him a report from my Parisian art-school. It might seem that he too was wary of getting used by me to legitimate a spurious claim for the transfer of foreign currency. Anyway I dashed off a letter to Roger Chastel at the Academie Ranson, asking him to send me such a report on my potential as an artist, and he sent me the following - which I am here translating into English.

You ask me what I think of your work! It’s rather more difficult to define your "potential" - as you put it so well - than to appraise your work over the course of one of my critical sessions.

Nevertheless, I feel that you have displayed a character and a temperament which are exceptional, that the evolution of your style since I’ve known you has been remarkable, and that there is no reason why this evolution should not continue if you keep working on it. I cannot tell you what manner of painter you will make, because I am no seer! But I can say that you do possess two of the necessary characteristics for a creative artist - the faith, and the temperament. I have confidence in you, and in your youth.

Armed with this letter, I descended upon Eton to request Wilfrid Blunt now to take up the matter with Mr Birley, so that he might furnish me with the strongest possible reference. And I took along with me a batch of my recent paintings. But I was unfortunate in that Wilfrid was absent that afternoon. Only Oliver Thomas was present at the Drawing Schools, we both remembered all too clearly how he had recommended David Brooke for the top art award, rather than myself. But I found that he was now anxious to make amends. While it was evident that he didn’t really like the direction in which my style was evolving, he did his best to treat it with respect. Moreover, he intimated that, whereas at the time he had genuinely judged that Brooke was a painter with more potential than myself, he had come to see that he’d been mistaken. The unseriousness of Brooke’s attitude had apparently become evident, after my own departure from Eton. Well it was nice of him to be making this belated apology. But it never quite went so far as to explain how he had placed me third - after both Brooke and Broad - in that final rating where I was expecting, and had been expected to come top.

Now I rather forget exactly what transpired after this date. I think that the Headmaster did finally send me a letter to say that I was a serious art student. But this wasn’t until after my return to Paris, and by that time I had finally made other arrangements to transfer a little more foreign currency to France. Henry had at first declined to be of any assistance at all in making it any easier for me to continue with what he regarded as a whim. (He could, after all, have put me in touch with any of his many friends who had the means to effect such a transfer.) Once I had returned to Paris however, he relented - as is shown in the following excerpt from a letter.

I have also been reconsidering the whole question about your allowance while you’re in France, and I rather think that, as I have in the past been prepared to pay Mme [A] £40 per month, I will continue to do so - and you can draw it and be responsible completely for your upkeep whilst in Paris. This I hope you will see is a very big concession on my part!

Well - if he wanted to see things that way, I wasn’t going to waste any time debating the generosity of his spirit. All I had to do was to continue picking up this allowance from Thos Cook & Son, and I found that I could now make ends meet in a manner that matched the living standards of my fellow art-students.

It had in fact been through the agency of Thos Cook & Son that I found the address of my next lodgings. This was a matter which I had sorted out shortly before the Coronation. I had been given the address of Mme Pla at 49 Rue Falguière, who was offering a room for 10,000 francs per month, which compared favourably with the 40,000 francs that Henry had been paying to Mme [A]. I would now have to feed myself of course, but I was in Montparnasse and far nearer both to the Sorbonne, and to the various art-schools.

Mme Enid Pla was a delightfully eccentric middle-aged widow, a bird-like creature, whom any sudden noise, one anticipated, might send fluttering from side to side in her cage. It was not unusual to see her darting round her apartments, attired in nothing more than her long woollen underwear. There was another lodger, a young Cambridge graduate called Laurence Fleming. And it soon became evident to me that Mme Pla was concerned about our welfare with what amounted to a quasi-maternal regard. She had a particular liking for young men who had been educated at any of the English public schools. I think that Laurie had come from Lancing. She was protective towards us, although this occasionally gave way to inquisitiveness. But I found her endearing, and I was well-satisfied with my new lodgings.

It must have been approaching the middle of June when I returned to Paris, with only a month to go before the quatorze juillet celebrations - after which Parisians would begin to drift away to their holiday resorts. But I continued with my art studies at the Academie Julien while attending the Sorbonne each morning. And I put in a brief spell at the Alliance Française, in the misplaced hope that this might give a sudden boost to my grasp of the French language.

My style in painting was loosening up all round - becoming less rigorously representational while I gave expression to what I had absorbed from contemporary abstract art. It was to the Academie Ranson that I still took my paintings to be criticized. But I was disappointed to discover that Chastel had now left the school, and his place had been taken by Henri Goetz - whom at this stage I found but a poor substitute for my previous mentor. But this may well have been because he was more reserved in the praise that he had to offer, in that he treated me as an average student like any of the others. But he was opening up my eyes to the way I should view a subject as a visual experience in itself, and to create something distinctive from it, rather than to relate my efforts too closely to whatever might actually be there for me to see.

As examples of what I did over this period I might single out a still life, with copper tub, bottle and plums, an abstract conception of sunrise, and a tangle of dancing figures inspired by the street scenes on the 14th of July. I should mention incidentally, that the paintings I had taken home with me in May had by now been shown by Henry to some of his more artistic friends. His attitude to them was evidently softening, for in a letter dated June 24th he had this to say.

Russell Page came down here the other day and had a look at your paintings, and I regret to say was very much impressed!! He naturally had criticisms to make, but he did say you were beginning to realize how to put on paint - whatever that may mean. Even Robin Campbell quite liked them, but let me tell you these are only two people.

There was a model who often posed at the Academie Julien called Mme le Nivet. She had taken a personal interest in my work ever since I had arrived at the school, because she felt that I was the only person who had managed to capture some particular expression she saw in herself, when I had painted my first portrait of her. I remember her hinting to me that she herself was endowed with magic powers, and she told me solemnly that one could see that I had "quelquechose dans la tête" - whatever that might have been intended to signify. Anyway, she was now urging me to take my paintings along to an artist called de Jouvencourt, for whom she often posed. She said that he would understand what I was trying to express, and I was given to understand that he was expecting me to call.

When I arrived at his address, I am far from certain that he had the faintest idea whom I might be, or exactly whom it might be who had recommended that I visit him. But with those difficulties surmounted, he was agreeably affable and was quite complimentary about my work. But he was really far more interested to hear that my brother-in-law was a director of the Marlborough Gallery in London, and from that point we were largely talking at cross purposes.

His own style was curiously similar to my own, at the stage when I was just about to leave Eton - when I had painted that large self-portrait, consisting of curling strands of flat paint, complementing each other within the cooler ranges of the spectrum. The difference in his case was that his colours were all drawn from the hot range. I don’t think he liked it when I began to suggest that I had myself done something rather similar in time past, for he was the established painter whereas I was not. But he joked his way round that point, and suggested that he might call in on David during the visit to London that he was just about to make, and he would suggest to him that he might encourage me by arranging to exhibit some of my paintings at the Marlborough Gallery.

I realized from the start that his true concern would be to investigate the possibility of obtaining for himself an exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery, and he didn’t even succeed in that venture. But he did go round to see David at his home address, which I had given to him, on the pretext of telling him about his brother-in-law’s potential talent as an artist - over a drink of course. Then on seeing that he was making no headway whatsoever, to serve either of our ends, he had taken his leave of them. I was told all this over the telephone, when I rang to enquire if any interest had been aroused.

Paris was already beginning to empty for the holiday season when I had an interesting encounter. I was sitting in a café when a couple strolled by, and it suddenly occurred to me that I knew the girl - who was none other than Caroline Blackwood, generally regarded as one of the great young beauties on the London scene, and one of Venetia Murray’s best friends. I had noted how attractive she was on the occasion when I had first met the two debutantes (as they then were), while I myself was still at Eton. And she now responded with recognition as soon as our glances met. The man with her was the artist, Lucian Freud. Their relationship was a matter for considerable gossip at this time. For Lucian had recently deserted his wife, Kitty (Epstein), to live with Caroline - whose aristocratic mother was simply furious. So I found myself eager to observe how they were getting on. And their behaviour was typical of young lovers, who had at last broken loose within the city where conventions counted for so much less. Anyway, they invited me to come and have a meal with them.

It was useful for me too to get Lucian’s comments on my paintings. So we went along afterwards to the Academie Julien, where he took a look at them. He was quite encouraging in what he said, taking a particular liking to my painting of a nude model which I had entitled Ophelia - a drowning girl, but almost cadaverous, and transforming into a shell as she floated within a pool of water. This gave me a pleasant boost to my self-confidence.

It was towards the end of July that I finally completed my revision of The Millions and the Mansions. This revision had in fact been a total waste of time, in that it added to the general length of the novel without improving in any way on the required concision. It was only the first draft which I finally preserved for my future study. But I suppose I may claim some credit for the perseverance in pursuing the task I had set myself to its conclusion.

Anyway, Daphne had suggested that I send it to Xan, once it was completed, and he would tell me whether he regarded it as something that might get published. So I posted it off to him, knowing in my heart that it simply wasn’t good enough - that I was still far too immature as a human being, to be able to treat with my material in a manner that might hold my readers’ interest. But this wasn’t something that I was ready to tell myself. That needed to come gently from someone else, whose opinion I might respect. And this was the disagreeable task which had been thrust upon Xan. He was quite prompt in his delivery of an answer, which arrived in a letter dated August 7th.

I’ve just finished your book and want to tell you at once that I enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately I am speaking only for myself, and not for any old member of a general public completely unacquainted with the Longleat background etc. Whether the ordinary man in the street (i.e. the proposed reader) will like it as much as I did, I can’t really tell.

Technically speaking, I am afraid it couldn’t possibly be published exactly as it is. Some bits are rather over-written (which a reader might take to be an insult to his intelligence.) Other bits are carelessly written, (And people don’t like bad craftsmanship!) Oddly enough you’ve successfully accomplished the novelist’s hardest task. By that I mean the architecture of the book as opposed to the decoration. Structurally your work’s damn good; where you lose marks is on the decoration side: (descriptive passages, dialogues etc.) I think the reason for this is that you’ve attempted the serio-comic style, which is the most difficult of all to handle successfully. (P.G.Wodehouse is a fairly good example of this kind of writing, which, for want of a better word, I call the "facetious" school; but then he isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.)

That’s my criticism, for what it’s worth. As for suggestions, (not that I’m in any way equipped for making them,) I’d advise you to sit on the thing for a bit. Forget about it for at least six months; then come back to it with a fresh outlook. I think you would then see the essential alterations to be made.

Or have you ever thought of it cast in dramatic form? It strikes me as being good theatrical material.... Then the playwright’s job is pretty specialized, even though it appears to me, superficially at least, to entail less labour.

His judgement came as a disappointment to me of course, but it wasn’t exactly unexpected. For Xan wasn’t the only person who was currently taking the line that I should curb my optimism with regard to the likelihood of my novel ever getting published.

Evidently I felt no need to brood over the matter, in that there were other projects on which to focus my mind. For my current activities were more concerned with my possible emergence as a painter, than as a novelist. My spell in Paris was now drawing to its close, but I had decided to spend a few final weeks on a painting holiday in the vicinity of Biarritz - departing by train, with my Velosolex in the luggage wagon. The real purpose of this trip will be divulged later, but I’ll confine myself here to recounting how I was hoping to repeat the stimulus which my painting had received from that previous tour of the chateaux on the Loire, around Easter. My idea was to live as roughly as I had done then, until I was churning out paintings with a zest for instant achievement. And I did get a few impressive canvasses completed. (I should mention one in particular, which was of an apple orchard with two hills in the background.)

But my big error was in supposing that the beaches of Biarritz might prove to be a suitable spot to sleep. A policeman quickly informed me that I’d be arrested if I were found sleeping on the stretch of sand just in front of the town, and advised me to try my luck on the beach just north of Biarritz - the beach where a fashionable swimming-pool had just been built. This was indeed better suited to my purposes, and there was a small café where (as a regular customer) I could dump all my luggage. And on walking back up the beach for a little way, to the spot where a headland protruded, I had it completely to myself.

My first night was spent in unspeakable discomfort, after digging a small trench for myself in the sand, and depositing my sleeping-bag in this. But no one had forewarned me how there was a species of sandhopper which infested this beach, and which took a savage delight in feasting upon me as soon as the sun had gone down. It was discomfort all right, but that was part of the whole business of being a creative artist, as I then envisaged it. So I determined to bear it with a grin, riding off to find an appropriate spot for painting just as soon as I’d breakfasted at the café.

I worked with amazing swiftness over that period, so that by evening, I was back at the café seeking to assuage my sharpening appetite. But while I was sauntering over to it, through the car park which catered for the clientele of the luxury swimming-pool, I spotted a large green Jaguar, which had caught my eye because of its sheer opulence. So I took a casual look inside, and saw - to my astonishment - that Caroline was sitting there. Somewhat cautiously, I tapped on the window and said: "Hello Caroline."

I was looking a bit scruffy, I daresay - as was my wont - but I was still surprised at her reaction. She behaved as if she had seen a ghost, but was hastily trying to adjust herself to the reality of the situation, while flustering for something suitable to say. "Goodness!.... Oh it’s you, Alexander! Fancy meeting you here! I didn’t know that you were in Biarritz." Then as David himself came walking across from the swimming-pool, she added: "Look, it’s Alexander." David said: "My dear boy, so it is! Hello." Caroline said: "What a pity we didn’t meet up before. We’re just on the point of leaving for Spain. Aren’t we David? We’re just off to San Sebastian." David said: "Yes, we’re leaving for San Sebastian." "I’ve been sleeping on the beach," I mentioned hopefully. But Caroline just said: "Really? Was it comfortable? What a pity we didn’t find out sooner. You see we’re expected in Spain. And we mustn’t be late. Come and see us when you’re next in London." David said: "Yes, we must now be on our way."

I waved them a farewell as they drove off together. It was beginning to sink home by this time, that neither Caroline nor David would permit me to impose upon them. And I could forget about it if I’d ever seriously been supposing that he might endeavour to assist me in my profession as an artist. My thoughts at that time however, were more in the direction of cadging a square meal from them. But it wasn’t on offer, so I returned to the beach café for my fare. The food itself was good, but the nasty part was the prospect of another night on the beach, putting myself once more upon the sandhoppers’ menu. I realized how the trench had made things a lot worse for me, in that the little beasts somehow delighted in collecting in underground crannies. Lying up on the surface was safer. But the weather now turned inclement - as indeed it did all too frequently here, in the Bay of Biscay. So I was awaken on this occasion by a thunderstorm, which drenched my sleeping-bag - whereupon I took refuge in a small cave called, quite inappropriately, La Grotte d’Amour. It was a misery trying to get any sleep on that hard floor. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the whole place stank of urine.

By morning, my morale was sinking low. But it began to rise again as I got warmed up by the sun. And I was just dozing there in the sunshine, when I was accosted by a personable English lady, whom I had never met before, but she enquired if I was Caroline’s brother. It turned out that Caroline and David hadn’t after all been due to set out for Spain that night, but only on the following morning. And in the meantime, they had returned to the villa where they had been staying as the guests of Prince and Princess Radziville, and where Lord and Lady Lambton - or Tony and Bindy - were two of the other guests. And this was Bindy, who had taken the line that it was remiss of Caroline - after learning how I’d been sleeping on the beach - not to have invited me to come back to the villa with her. So, with Caroline now in Spain, she had taken it upon herself to rectify this lapse, by extending to me an invitation from the Prince to come to dinner that very evening. And if I wanted it, I could avail myself of the wooden shed at the bottom of the Prince’s garden, as an abode where I could pitch my sleeping-bag for the rest of my holiday. I accepted with alacrity.

I shall leave the remainder of this story until the following section. It will suffice here to say that it furnished me with an appropriate nook from which to make my sorties as an artist. And when it came to an end, I sold my Velosolex to the proprietor of the café where I had been taking so many of my meals, and travelled by train, first to Paris, and then on to Britain, and to Longleat. I had made things easier for myself on this occasion, by keeping my canvasses rolled up together in one bundle, which I was able to take on the train with me. I was returning home in early September.