ReCollection: Kettle's Yard Oral History Archive

I stayed with him in his flat in Jordan Lane. I spent three days with him, I think, there, so I spent this time with Jim and basically he's telling me about the history of Kettle's Yard and history of himself and his relationships with the artists. As it turned out, it was all the stories that everybody knew anyway and which he published and, etc, etc, but it was nice to spend time with him. Very important, I think, to see how he lived. Effectively, he'd set up a little, mini Kettle's Yard in Edinburgh, although the quality of the artwork wasn't the same but it was, you know, his spartan way of life. I can remember him saying when I was washing up the dishes after dinner, and dinner was a very light meal I have to say, it was grated carrot and I can't remember what else, but it was like an hors d'oeuvre for most people. I remember washing up, he said, 'well, I only use hot water, I don't use washing up liquid because it's a waste of money' and you would literally just wash the things under the hot tap and dry them up and that was it. He was very much in control of his faculties still, very alert, a dapper man, always well turned out. I can remember that between 2pm and 4pm, I had to go out because between 2pm and 4pm he would visit St Columbus Hospice to visit the terminal patients. He would talk to me about that too, about actually how a lot of them didn't want to see him for quite a long time and then, I think, gradually, he managed to integrate himself into that community. So the 2pm to 4pm ritual of Kettle's Yard was maintained in the visits to St Columbus Hospice.

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As Paul [Clough] will have told you, on Thursday mornings we went down before 9 o'clock to the WI stall to buy flowers and we'd do all the flower arrangements and it had to be those, kind of, cottage flowers, it wasn't formal, it was cottage flowers which went with the cottage garden, if you like. So, obviously a lot of my time was spent organising exhibitions. I would organise the show, I would drive the van to collect the works of art, I would organise the insurance, I would paint the walls of the gallery, I would sweep the floors, hang every work of art, with my assistants obviously. I drove as far afield as St Just in Cornwall to collect works for an exhibition and back again. It was exhausting actually. I can remember taking works by Eric Gill back after an Eric Gill exhibition that we had. I dropped off some works at the Tate Gallery, then I drove onto Weymouth, where I dropped off something else, then I went on to Totnes in Devon - the exhibition had been organised by the Dartington - dropped off some things there, I was with Mike Tooby at the time, then we went on to St Just to collect works by Karl Veschke for the next exhibition and we were back within two days. Painted the gallery, hung the show and it opened by... so the whole thing took place over seven days. We'd shut an exhibition on a Sunday, we'd strike it on a Monday, we'd deliver it all back on the Tuesday, collect the next stuff Tuesday or Wednesday, we'd be back in the gallery Thursday, hang it, off we went, and we did everything.

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Well, my letters from Jim started off full of enthusiasm and it went very well and I quite enjoyed writing to him and telling him what I was doing but things began to break down after a while when I had a set of bookshelves constructed. The library, when I arrived, consistently simply of that set of shelves that is opposite you as you walk into the extension. There was to the right of it a chest of drawers that was stuffed full of catalogues which nobody was able to look at or consult. I started to go through them and thought, there are some really interesting things in here. I thought the only way to deal with this was to build some more shelves so all the shelves that are on the right hand side that go under the window were built on my instructions and I took great care to sculpt out the window. Jim didn't like that because of course his chest of drawers had been moved and it wasn't something that he had done and Kettle's Yard was his work of art, he wouldn't say so, but it was his work of art, he saw it like that. And worse was yet to come because I moved the sculpture by Gaudier called Caritas from the oval table and put it in the niche by the window because I thought it looked rather nice there, in my innocence. I subsequently realise I actually was wrong. I think it is better where Jim had it on the oval table. But at the time, I thought it looked quite dramatic silhouetted against the daylight. And all hell let loose then. So there were endless letters putting pressure on me to move it and I began to dig my heels in and wouldn't move it. In the end, I did relent, I think, and I did put it back. The letters would become more and more emotional and more and more he would be receiving reports, I have no idea who from, but from people who had visited or people who lived in Cambridge who were friends about this, that or the other, which I had or hadn't done. They might have been true and they might not have been true and it just cranked up the whole emotional thing. I continued to read the letters and I continued to respond to them but a lot of the letters were pressurising to do this, do that. 'You don't take people round anymore, you don't do this', you know, 'Why do you need an office? Why won't you put Helen's bedroom back as it was?' But actually, before I left, we did re-open Helen's bedroom with furniture that I think Jim provided.

Direct link to audio: .mp3