TWO CHELSEA “RAGS,” 1914 AND 1918
1914
It used to begin as a rumour, a faint stirring and excitement in King’s
Road, Chelsea. The artist on the top floor of Joubert Studios—an artist
who had a private income and a gently nursed hypochondria—received
a parcel from home: a couple of cooked chickens, perhaps, a tongue,
cakes, crystallised fruits, three bottles of wine and so on. The lady
who occupied the studio below, and the musical critic who lived in the
third studio from the top, were duly apprised of the fact, and Norman
and Eddie Morrow were called in from near by for a consultation.
“Clearly,” the lady remarked, “a rag is indicated. A rag must always
have a beginning, and this undoubtedly is a most excellent beginning.
Ring up Susie, somebody, and fetch Hearn over and Ivan and let the
Cumberlands know; and, oh! Hughes, dear little Herbert, lend me your
pots and pans and things. And, Warlow, just run round everywhere and
tell all the people you meet. Don’t forget John, and I think that Deane
would like that girl with fuzzy hair. We’ll begin at seven. No, we
won’t: we’ll begin now.”
And Warlow, nursing his hypochondria and being very biddable, sighed
and moved away, saying beseechingly as he went:
“You _will_ leave me a wing, won’t you? I’ve had no breakfast yet.”
But neither had the rest, and by the time Warlow, suffering in a
resigned and patient kind of way from paleness and breathlessness,
returned, one of the chickens had vanished, and the long table with its
litter of paper, cardboard, pencils and paint, was now littered also
with plates and knives and forks and breadcrumbs. The rag had begun.
The month was May, a true May with a warm wind, a warmer sun, and
fluttering green leaves. The little party—the nucleus of the much
larger party that was to meet there in the evening—drifted downstairs
to Hughes’s studio where there was a grand piano and a portable
harmonium which appeared to belong to no one in particular. Hughes,
looking a little ruefully at the MS. upon which he was engaged, put it
away on a shelf, opened his wide windows and began to play. Harry Lowe,
with his magnificent but untrained voice, appeared dramatically in the
doorway and sang:
_Largo {For he’s a Scotsman, a bonny Scotsman,
grandioso_ { His feyther and his mither,
{ His sister and his brither—
(_Forte_) They are _all_ Scotch, from the land of Roderick Dhu;
(_Vivace_) And the whitewash brush in the middle of his kilt
(_Piano_) Is all Sco-otch too.
This went to a great tune devised, invented, composed and arranged
by Hughes and Lowe. The great air, heard with its cunning chatter of
an accompaniment from the piano, put everyone in the right mood, and
Norman Morrow, whose head was always full of ideas, began to prepare
“stunts” for the evening, whilst Warlow, having nothing better to do,
attired himself as an Italian Count, sat at the open window, and smiled
sadly at all the girls whose attention he could attract in the street
below.
Norman’s idea was a revue—a revue of Any Old Thing: Mona Lisa, the
sale of beautiful slaves, the Salome Dance by six-foot-two Harry Lowe,
the Innocent Wench who took the Wrong Turning, etc., etc. He wanted
to prepare the groundwork for the evening’s performance; the details
could be filled in on the spur of the moment. But, in the afternoon
rehearsal, several scenes, exciting the actors, were studied carefully
to the most minute particular. Kitty, in the meantime, was upstairs
preparing food, her dainty hands fluttering over salads and sandwiches.
At six, jolly, lovable little Susie rushed from her work, revitalised
everybody, and sang in her funny little voice, holding a cigarette in
one hand and a saucepan in the other.
But before the Rag Proper began, many charming idiocies were enacted.
Warlow and Eddie Morrow walked to Sloane Square (it is conceivable
that they called at the Six Bells on the way) for the sole purpose of
riding back again in a taxi-cab, Warlow in a great Russian overcoat
smothered in fur, Eddie a little unkempt and looking as though he had
just stepped out of one of J. M. Synge’s plays. Harry Lowe telephoned
a number of telegrams to a far-off post office where it was supposed
there was a lady who owned his heart and sold postage stamps. Norman
Morrow sat in a corner daubing pieces of brown paper with yellow paint
and chuckling inconsequently to himself. All three studios, one above
the other, appeared to be in glorious disorder, but, as a matter of
fact, nearly every brain was busy with preparations, and by seven
o’clock everything was ready for the great rag....
I cannot re-create the scene for you. I do not know quite how it is,
but the gaiety, the light-heartedness of that most jolly evening
ooze from my heart as I write. I am not sufficient of an artist to
sweep from my heart all the sad, irrecoverable things that my heart
remembers. Especially, I cannot forget Ivan Heald, who now lies dead.
(A year later he was to say to me, in that same studio: “This is a real
good-bye, Gerald. It is not possible that both of us will survive
this.”... And, of course, it is he who has gone. One feels mean in
surviving, in enjoying the savour of life, when one’s best friends have
departed.) ...
The artistic Irishman is a perfect actor, an inimitable mimic, and the
two Morrows surpassed everyone. If ever you have seen Eddie Morrow, it
will appear to you inconceivable that he could ever make a good Mona
Lisa. Yet his Mona Lisa was perfect. He smiled so mysteriously, so
faintly, so imaginatively, that Walter Pater, had he seen him, would
have rewritten that swooning chapter which contains so much of art’s
opiate.... I remember Edith Heald who, unexpectedly to me, revealed
consummate art as a nigger-boy, her eyes rolling in rapt wonderment.
I remember Hearn’s eyeglasses, and the smiling eyes behind them, and
the little scurry of words that occasionally came from his lips when
something magical touched his spirit. And I can hear Herbert Hughes’
contented voice saying: “Well, this is rather splendid, don’t you know.”
Hughes was awfully good to me on these occasions, for he would allow me
to improvise the music for the dumb charades, though as an extempore
player—and, indeed, as a player of any kind—he is worlds above me.
And I used to love to invent Eastern Dances à la Bantock to fit the
gyrations of Harry Lowe, or Debussy chords for anything shadowy and
sentimental, or chromatic melodies—prolonged and melting things in the
“O Star of Eve” manner—for luscious love scenes, or fat, bulgy discords
when some real tomfoolery was afoot.
You must imagine everybody gay and, occasionally, just a little
riotous; in remembrance, it seems to me very beautiful because so happy
and childlike. And you must imagine everybody very friendly, even to
complete strangers. There was a carnival atmosphere. Clever people were
there with their brains burning bright. There were wit, music, wine,
pretty women, courtesy, infinite good-will.
Perhaps, towards midnight, we would seek change in quietness, and,
lying on rugs spread on the waxed floor, would listen to Norman
singing, unaccompanied, an Irish Rebel song, and something a little
hard would come into Irish Susie’s eyes for a moment or two, and I
remember with regret how, some months after war had broken out, I said
after Norman had been singing that it was no longer pleasant to me to
hear Rebel songs. Regret? Yes; for when I said that I was a prig and
was imagining myself as something of a soldier-hero. If only Norman
were alive now to sing whatsoever songs he liked!
Well, the evening lapsed into night and the night into morn, and again
we became boisterous and new ideas were put into shape and little
tragedies were given in the burlesque manner. The resourcefulness of
the mimes! The devilishly clever satire! The good spirits that never
failed!...
* * * * *
It is no use. I cannot describe for you one of those great nights, for
the mood will not come. And one of the reasons why I cannot recapture
the spirit of a Chelsea Rag as it was in the old days, is because
whilst I am writing I have in my mind a picture of a very different
kind.
* * * * *
1918
Early in 1918 I was in London for a brief period after an absence from
England of more than two years spent in France, Egypt, Greece and
Serbia. My health was broken, my spirits were low. The Chelsea people
were dispersed; only Hearn, with his lame foot, was left of the men,
but several of the women were to be found. Herbert Hughes, by some
miracle, was on leave, and he turned up unexpectedly one night at my
flat. We talked quietly, laughed a little, had some music, and fell
into silence.
“Those great days!” said I, apropos of nothing.
“Yes. Nothing like them will come again. But all of us who remain alive
and are still in England must meet. What about next Sunday? We’ll meet
at Madame’s.”
And so it was arranged. Next Sunday there were seven of us to make
merry, whereas in former days there were forty or fifty. But we seven
were together once more: we who, as it were, had been saved—saved
perhaps only temporarily.
It is a long studio in which we sit, but screens enclose a piano, the
fireplace, a few rugs and chairs, and a table. Madame is tall and quiet
and distinguished; her light soprano voice conveys an impression of
wistfulness, and her personality, full of charm and a sadness that does
not conceal her courage, diffuses itself throughout the room. We have
met together for a rag, but no one evinces the least desire to indulge
in any violent jollity.
Hughes goes to the piano, for a piano always draws him as a magnet
draws steel, and sometimes, half-consciously, he feels the pull of
one before he has seen it. He goes to the piano and, perking his
nose at an angle of about forty degrees with the horizontal, plays
French songs very quietly, whilst we sit gazing into the heart of
the fire, each with his own thoughts, and probably each with the
same thoughts—thoughts of Harry Lowe in Greece, of Gordon Warlow in
Mesopotamia, of those who lie dead, though but two years before they
were more alive than we ourselves, of those who have gone to France and
never returned....
And Madame, moving with our thoughts, gently rises and joins Hughes and
begins, her hands clasped on her breast, to sing with most alluring
grace things by Hahn, Debussy and Duparc. The music lulls us into a
very luxury of sadness, into a mood in which grief loses its edge and
sorrow its poignancy. To me, who have heard no music for two years,
her singing is mercilessly beautiful, so beautiful, indeed, that my
breathing becomes uneven and my eyes wet. And once again I feel that
spinal shiver which, as a little boy, I used to experience when I heard
an anthem by Gounod or just caught the sound of a military band as it
marched down another road.... I never used to run from the house to see
the band, for even in those early days I had an intuitive knowledge
that beauty is mystery, and that to probe mysteries is to mar, if not
altogether to kill, beauty.... And to-night, when Madame comes to the
end of each song, I do not speak, I scarcely breathe, so fearful am I
that the spell may be broken. But something of the spell lasts even
when she ceases singing altogether and, looking at my wife, I know
that she feels it too—that, indeed, all in our little company are more
quietly happy, more reconciled to all the brutality and ugliness over
the sea, than we have been for a long age.
We talk in quiet tones about the past, the present and the future, each
contributing something to the common stock of conversation. Madame
brings us tea and cakes, and we listen to the dim rumour of traffic in
King’s Road. And then, not very late, moved by a common impulse, we
rise to leave, and talking softly as we go, make our way outside where,
as we did in that spot three years ago, we say farewell, wondering as
we do so what Fate has in store for each of us and whether for one or
more of us this is the end of our life in Chelsea—a life in which we
have worked hard and played hard, enjoying both work and play, and in
which we have been carelessly unmindful of the danger lying in wait for
our country.