Ravilious & Co by Andy Friend

Author:Andy Friend
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
Published: 2017-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

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John Nash, illustration for Men and Fields, auto-lithograph, 1939.

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Eric Ravilious, The Pharmaceutical Chemist, auto-lithograph, 1937.

Looking back in 1942 Tirzah appraised the break-up: ‘the truth was when it came to the point neither of them really wanted to face the upset and trouble that their parents would create if they openly started living together, and they both felt guilty about me and little John’. What was clear in hindsight, however, had been very much in the balance in the spring and early summer of 1936 after Eric – receiving Peggy’s news by letter that Helen was distraught – followed her to Devon where she was staying with one of Peggy’s sisters. That spring Tirzah began her own affair with the painter John Aldridge, a resident of Great Bardfield, who had become a friend while they were still at Brick House, but it was the prospect of Eric and Helen living together in London that threatened a fundamental rearrangement of all their lives. Initially confused by the sudden turn of events and reluctant to tell her mother, Helen asked Eric to wait until her sister’s baby was born. As Tirzah recalled: ‘This didn’t seem a very convincing reason to me and for the first time I felt angry with Helen. After all it isn’t easy to give up your husband and your sense of security when you have a child to look after … it was cruel to have Eric back when I had made the effort of parting with him’.48

The lease of the flat in Belsize Park Gardens was coming to an end and Peggy and Jim were moving towards marriage – in order to avoid embarrassment locally, they had already told neighbours at Furlongs they were married. So the possibility of living together as two couples in close proximity now became the subject of excited discussion, only marginally dampened when, as Helen reported, ‘Peggy told her headmistress she was thinking of getting married and was told in that case she would lose her job – which she hadn’t at all expected – it’s rather a blow … the more I think about it the more difficult it seems for me to stay on at North London after this term – it would be so awful to be sent away suddenly and scandalously … I must think of other ways to earn money.’ Hopes focused on a house in Camden Town available for rent and rates of £124 a year and capable of being occupied as two flats, and Helen concluded her letter; ‘My Darling … I’m beginning to realise how wonderful it will be living with you.’ ‘I am simply longing to live with you,’ he replied, ‘The house must be cheap enough for us all to be able to afford losing teaching jobs it seems to me … we shall have to earn money other ways as you say … The puppets for the garden theatre sounds a lovely job …’.49

At this point Eric and Tirzah had agreed to

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