Letters to Gwen John by Celia Paul

Author:Celia Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2022-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

Gwen talked to her wildly—some fantastic story about her infatuation with a priest who had just died. She told Jeanne that it was he who had made her an artist, not Rodin, and that it was he who had commissioned the portrait of Mère Poussepin for the convent. The nuns had sent him to Versailles. He was stricken with grief over the death of a beloved older sister. She told Jeanne that she hadn’t realised how much he needed her and she was distraught that she hadn’t written to him. But she visited him on his bier because she wanted to draw him. When she moved down the sheet, which had been drawn up to his chin, so that she could see his neck, she saw a livid purple bruise on the side of his neck and realised that he had hanged himself. A newspaper report confirmed her suspicion that he had strangled himself with the window cord. She was mortified. She felt that if she had only visited him more often, he would never have killed himself.

Gwen felt that she had been beset by evil forces and she started to weep. She told Jeanne that she would like to die, but that she knew it would be a sin to commit suicide. She sobbed that she had had to drive nails into her shoes to keep them together; that she had lived in abject poverty and she’d had ‘no warm clothing of any description’; that her ‘hardships had been inconceivable’. Jeanne said she knew how much Augustus loved her and wanted to protect her—perhaps her state of mind was caused by extreme loneliness; perhaps she would be happier being in England with her family? Gwen fiercely defended her choice to live alone, saying that she couldn’t bear to live anywhere near Augustus—or anyone—who might be able to come in every five minutes and advise her to paint ‘in this way or that way’.

Jeanne wrote to Quinn that ‘one interesting fact emerged’ from this peculiar meeting: Gwen knew ‘the mysterious country of flowers’ that she had always dreamt about since earliest childhood. Gwen had described to her the strange forms and the size of the blossoms—white star flowers. Jeanne had responded to her by saying that she also had dreams of flowers, and she described to Gwen the flowers in the Apocryphon ‘the flower fields of Araath’. Jeanne went on to confide in Gwen that she firmly believed in the existence of these fields and that only the pure in heart or children could visit them.

Jeanne tried to distract Gwen from her melancholy thoughts, but Gwen became depressed again. She said:

I have become corrupted and depraved. I am eating food now and thinking that it is good. I am lying—that is, I lie sometimes; I no longer desire to live a religious life. Had I gone to Versailles to be with my friend as I intended, I might not have been able to endure the long hours in the church. He was intensely religious: he really had faith.

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