Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation - James Stourton

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he wrote, ‘was the first of several pieces of human good fortune which have befallen me in my life.’19 He always claimed that Lam saved him: ‘At last I had someone whom I could love and depend on, and who even seemed to share my interests.’20 Lam became his protector and companion. This remarkable woman spoke four languages, never married, and ended up, thanks to Clark’s recommendation, as the housekeeper at Chequers, where she once remarked on the similarity between Clark senior and Mr Churchill.

      Clark claimed to have had no childhood friends on the Riviera, but Isobel Somerville, the daughter of the English vicar at Menton, remembers playing rounders with him; she also recalls his passion for parsley sandwiches. She was captivated by Lam, with her compassion, her sense of the ridiculous and her exhortations to her charge – ‘Kenneth, don’t be silly.’ She remembers Lam bringing ‘her fabulously rich employers to Menton, each in turn. When she went to the Churchills, because we got no gossip whatever out of her, we changed her name into “Damn-clam-Lam”.’21

      Perhaps the first indication of Clark’s remarkable gift for engaging the affection of distinguished friends and mentors is his improbable attachment to the Empress Eugénie, the elderly widow of Napoleon III, a neighbour who would allow him to accompany her as she took her morning walks. Otherwise the rather sedate life of the Riviera was punctuated for the small boy with carnivals and flower festivals which brought colour and a welcome vulgarity.

      But there were also enormous compensations to life at Sudbourne. His favourite room was the library, the heart of the house, still filled with books left by the previous owner. Clark learned to read late, from an illustrated manual called Reading Without Tears in which each letter was represented by a pictogram. He read all the standard Edwardian children’s classics, but claimed that one series of books ‘influenced my character more than anything I have read since’. This was the illustrated adventures of ‘Golliwogg’ by Florence and Bertha Upton.22 Golliwogg, as Clark explained, lives on terms of perfect happiness with five girls. He always treats them with the greatest courtesy, and they share his adventures. Their role is to admire him, and when things go wrong they rescue and console him. ‘He was for me an example of chivalry far more persuasive than the unconvincing Knights of the Arthurian legend,’ wrote Clark, who added the frank admission, ‘I identify myself with him completely and have never quite ceased to do so.’23 Indeed, he was to spend the second half of his life enjoying carefully managed relationships with a number of women at the same time, and their role would be to appreciate and console him in a not dissimilar fashion.

      Meanwhile in his nursery the solitary Clark enjoyed constructing elaborate Classical buildings with his bricks, and putting on performances with his circus figures à la Menton. ‘When my parents departed for Cap Martin and Vichy, I was left to my own devices,’ he wrote. ‘I was an only child and should have felt lonely, but in fact I do not remember suffering any inconvenience from solitude. On the contrary, I remember with fear and loathing the rare occasions when some well-wishing grown-up arranged for me to meet companions of my own age.’24 When other children did appear he found that he had little in common with them. Nor did he expect them to share his interests, thus nurturing a personal exceptionalism from an early age. He rejoiced when they left, and ‘returned with relief to my bears, my bricks, or at a later date, my billiard table’.25 All his life he would be pleased when guests had departed, and he believed that his early solitude ‘made me absolutely incapable of any collective activity. I cannot belong to a group.’26 He tended to exaggerate this point: in fact he was to demonstrate an unending capacity for collegiate activity by serving on numerous committees throughout his career, from the war onwards. His solitary childhood did make him shy – except with grown-ups – but it also helped to develop his sensitive perception of works of art.

      Perhaps a greater enemy than loneliness to a solitary child might have been boredom. But Clark was at pains to dispel any such notion: ‘my days were all pleasure. Most children suffer from boredom, but I do not remember a dull moment at Sudbourne. I loved the Suffolk country, the heaths and sandpits, the great oaks in Sudbourne wood, the wide river at Iken.’27 Equally, he could write: ‘in family life the enemy of happiness is not oppression, but boredom, and against this the unfortunate parents are almost powerless’.28 All his life Clark was frightened of boredom – an important consideration in his attitude to other people. To most observers he displayed a very low boredom threshold; he was always allergic to bores, and was terrified of becoming one himself in his lectures or television programmes.

      The large eighteenth-century Sudbourne Hall was opulent, and its estate well-tended, but down the road was romantic Iken on the Alde estuary, with its isolated thatched Saxon church of St Botolph. Clark would be taken there by horse and cart to go shrimping, and it was to remain a magical spot for him: ‘I found that the delicate music of the Suffolk coast, with its woods straggling into sandy commons, its lonely marshes and estuaries full of small boats, still had more charm for me than the great brass bands of natural scenery, the Alps or the Dolomites.’29 It was here, in a cove on the edge of the River Alde, that Clark was painted by Charles Sims, the first artist he befriended. He had already had his portrait painted by Sir John Lavery in the manner of Velázquez (which he described, using Maurice Bowra’s favourite term of praise, as ‘by no means bad’). Clark thought the Sims portrait lacked freshness, but the choice of setting on the Alde estuary is important. He would return there all his life, and at nearby Aldeburgh on the coast he would write his best books. When in later years he formed a close friendship with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, he became an early champion of the Aldeburgh Festival and helped establish its reputation.