The Surprising Life of Constance Spry Page 18
But Gluck’s relationship with Connie was calming, relatively undemanding, and safe; while her painting, which came before everything else, gave her order and direction.
By November 1933 Connie’s first book Flower Decoration was ready to go to the publisher. As promised, Sir William Lawrence read and corrected the proofs and wrote a short foreword in which he bemoaned the monotonous standardization of flowers and vegetables being grown in the UK and the present practice of flower arranging, which had been ‘on a level with English cooking’ until Mrs Spry came along. According to Lawrence, Connie’s book ‘pullulates with suggestions . . . and gives lists of flowers which run the gamut of architectural forms, and range from seakale gone to seed to the great white spider-lily of the tropics laden with the rich vanilla scent of Piver’s [perfume] shop in Paris’. ‘You will be grateful’, he went on, ‘to Mrs Spry for precipitating an aesthetic renaissance.’ It was illustrated with beautiful if stylized black-and-white photographs by the famous artists’ photographer Paul Laib, whose services were probably acquired through Gluck, and indeed the book included his reproduction of her painting Chromatic.
On publication Flower Decoration was reviewed by the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society: ‘A beauty specialist in the world of flowers, Mrs Constance Spry is unique in the lavish way in which she gives away secrets in her book.’ Indeed, here she offered her professional ‘secrets’ to the general public, sharing her original vision and casting aside convention with a contemptuous sniff. The book distilled most of the ideas and principles for flower decoration that she had used for her clients and would use for the rest of her life. She never believed in professional rules, was always quick to admit her mistakes and often changed her mind, whether about a flower she once disliked or a combination of colours that at first hadn’t seemed to work.
In March 1934 Connie held a party to celebrate publication. It was a glittering but warm-hearted affair, with society names sweeping in to offer their congratulations before going on to the theatre or a dance. Her family was there, too, and her father George was plainly immensely proud of her, even though he never really understood why she had abandoned education for doing the flowers for high society. Shav, Tony, Val and Gluck were all there, as were her other close friends. Tony had recently got work, possibly through Marjorie Russell, as a copywriter with J. Walter Thompson. He had ambitions to be a writer and felt particularly proud that his mother had actually published a book.
Connie was overwhelmed by the attention and the flattery, but the pleasure she took in her first publication was overshadowed by great sadness. Sir William Lawrence had died in January, just after the book had gone to press. And only a few weeks later, in February, came news of the sudden death of Connie’s first and most beloved friend and mentor, Norman Wilkinson, at only fifty-one. His obituary described him thus: ‘Whimsical, witty and lovable, his discrimination and taste in every form of decoration were an inspiration.’ Connie, who had received so much help and encouragement from him, felt particularly bereft.
Less than six months later, tragedy struck again. Her adored father, the one man whom Connie loved unreservedly and whose praise she had always striven so hard to win, died. Sir Robert Blair wrote a fulsome appreciation of his old friend in The Times, though ending rather sourly: ‘Mrs Fletcher, three sons and one daughter survive him. The daughter was a live principal of one of London’s compulsory day continuation schools.’ Shav, who was on holiday with Val in France when George died, wrote to Connie: ‘I think it is hard for you to be mentioned only as a “live principal”.’ Connie’s grief at the loss of her father was compounded by the problem of what to do with her mother. Etty had become frail and irritable, and could not live alone. Connie’s relations with her were as bad as ever; though she had long since detached herself from her rule, their estrangement over her divorce had endured. A rather bizarre solution was found when James Heppell Marr, Etty’s ‘true son-in-law’, returned from India after retiring and offered to look after her. A house was found for them in Sussex where Marr devotedly nursed the fretful old woman until she died. Whether Connie ever visited her mother and ex-husband is not known. Her ruthlessness in ‘moving on’ may have meant she put them both behind her and never gave time to considering their needs nor acknowledged any thought or care that she might owe them.
Of all the patrons Connie had found for Gluck, Molly Mount Temple had taken to the artist with particular enthusiasm. She commissioned her to paint both her portrait and Broadlands itself. Gluck spent considerable time there as a guest, often without Connie, and also produced several flower paintings, mostly of classic Spry displays made from material gathered in the gardens there. It was during one of these visits, in May 1936, that Gluck fell hopelessly in love. Nesta Obermeyer was the wife of a wealthy, elderly American. She was beautiful, stylish, glamorous, charismatic and lived life to the full. She seemed perfect at everything: painting, driving fast cars, yoga, skating, skiing and travelling. She enjoyed a glittering social life with her husband with whom she stayed for convenience, for his wealth and as a cover for her affair with Gluck, which ‘was to be an absolute marriage outside of society’s terms of a marriage’. The Obermeyers owned several homes, including the Mill House, Plumpton, Sussex, where Gluck now went for weekends of passion.
After what Gluck described as her ‘fateful marriage night’ with Nesta in May, she made only a couple more visits to Connie’s home. On the first, according to Gluck’s journal, Connie was cold and offhand and said she was ‘bored with everything to do with flower pictures’, and Gluck ‘walked in the park alone’. It is extremely uncharacteristic for Connie to have made such a remark. More probably, she knew about Nesta and was jealous, even hurt, and was trying somehow to end the relationship on her own terms. If so, the attempt was clumsy and unconvincing. Another day, Gluck went to visit Connie for lunch and tea. She wrote: ‘C very stuffy to begin with and not much better after. Relief to get home.’ Then, a little later, when Connie stayed at Bolton House: ‘C. dinner and night BH. Talk and say no more.* There was a final dinner in November: ‘Awful evening Thursday’ was all Gluck wrote.
A week later there followed a cryptic, confused exchange. Gluck’s maid left her a telephone message: ‘Flower Decorations rang up. Mrs Spry would like to spend Thursday and Friday evening with you.’ Gluck phoned the shop to say she could not do these dates; in fact she was seeing Nesta on those evenings. But Connie’s private secretary, Miss Lake, told Gluck that no one from the shop had telephoned her: ‘A mistake has been made.’ Connie wrote immediately:
Darling Gluck.
I’ve just had such an extraordinary message – ‘Miss Gluck sorry she can’t put you up on Thursday and Friday.’ It’s Greek to me! I haven’t dreamed of such a thing. It must be someone else. You must have thought me a perfect damned nuisance. We’ve tried to get you on the telephone to explain – or Miss Lake has – with no success and I’ve got to go off without having it explained to you.
Love Constance.
On the same day Gluck sent back Connie’s nightdress with a letter. Miss Lake also wrote to Gluck:
I assure you that no message was sent to you on Mrs Spry’s behalf last evening. The shop was closed at 7 o’clock and Mrs Spry herself left here at least an hour earlier. Any message being sent from Mrs Spry or for her would definitely go through me and no other person here would have any knowledge of this.
This seems to suggest that while the loyal and discreet Miss Lake was in the know about Gluck, no one else in the shop was aware of the relationship. So who did telephone and leave the message, and why? Perhaps Connie, hoping to see Gluck again, had sent the message and, when rebuffed, denied that she done so? She was, after all, quite capable of drawing a veil over things she preferred not to acknowledge and walk away from unpleasantness while giving her own version of events. Yet her letter has an openness and directness that make it difficult to imagine that she was lying.
The following Monday Nesta Obermeyer
called to see Connie. The tenor of their conversation can be guessed at from the letter Connie sent her the next day:
My dear Nesta,
I really cannot tell you how I value what you did yesterday. It was a very generous, a very wise and kind thing to have done. More of your spirit would help everyone.
I look forward to seeing you again, and I’d like you to feel very sure of me – of my friendship, of my wish to be of use and of help if ever that were needed. I love courage and clear cut action – and anyone who has the first and behaves the last fills me with affection and respect. Excuse the grammar, the paper and the dirt!
My affectionate thanks.
Constance.
It would seem that while Gluck herself remained evasive and unclear with Connie about her relationship with Nesta, it was Nesta who took the decisive action to visit Connie and tell her the truth. Connie certainly admired her for her straightforward approach and her ‘clear cut action’. Hope of any kind of relationship with Gluck was well and truly over. Immediately after Nesta’s visit, she and Gluck went to a concert at the Wigmore Hall, and on 5 December – Connie’s birthday, now scratched out of Gluck’s diary – a Rolls-Royce arrived at Bolton House to take Gluck to Plumpton for the weekend. Gluck burned everything to do with past relationships, and thus her four-year affair with Connie was consigned to ashes. It is doubtful whether Connie ever spoke to either Gluck or Nesta again.
Gluck’s new exhibition opened early in 1937. There were several new flower groups, showing Connie’s continuing influence, as well as paintings from their holidays in Hammamet such as a cornucopia of pomegranates in a shell. The centrepiece of the exhibition, Nature Morte, which had been painted before the end of the relationship, was a typical Spry arrangement of wild plants: dead flowers, grasses and clematis seed-heads in one of Connie’s alabaster vases.
The affair with Connie had given Gluck an entrée into a wider social circle and many new commissions. Connie, for her part, had found a soulmate, a fellow artist, someone sensitive and caring who needed her. Until Gluck, the people Connie really loved were her father, who she felt was disappointed in her; Shav, her beloved companion who betrayed her trust; and her son Tony, whom she certainly loved but never seemed to have felt very maternal towards. Gluck was possibly the only person in her life who awoke intense emotional and physical feelings buried deep inside her. Her unhappy childhood and vexed relationships had given Connie a tough, even selfish carapace. Her passion and her ardour had all been for her work; she had never allowed herself to stop and consider her own inner feelings and desires. But, briefly perhaps, with Gluck, she did.
EIGHT
Absolute Discretion
1934–1937
One bitterly cold day in the late winter of 1934, Connie was on her way home from her weekly visit to Swanley Horticultural College in Kent when she saw a building looming up out of the fog. She asked the driver to stop so she could explore what turned out to be a fruit farm abandoned during the slump and near-derelict. Park Gate was a beautiful redbrick Georgian farmhouse with a cluster of classic oast-houses, a weed-choked cobbled yard leading to a large overgrown garden and broken-down orchards. Shav had been complaining that Colney Park was too large and expensive to run. ‘We must find a farm,’ he had pronounced. This one seemed perfect to Connie, just what they had envisaged for their next home; a change of air and a fresh start, with plenty of space where they could cultivate productive cutting beds for the business.
The Sprys were on the move again. With Shav’s colonial background and Connie’s unsettled childhood, they seemed to share a peripatetic streak. Connie was a nomad at heart, restless and always ready to move on, to a new home or a new project. When a phase in her life was over, she did not look back. She was not sentimental about houses, possessions or even gardens, though she always took her beloved plants with her. ‘It is always an unhappy experience to be turned out of a garden,’ she wrote, yet she seemed to take an almost reckless satisfaction from the challenge of moving all her plants, on several occasions, to a new home. Whatever she was involved in, even with gardening, she hated getting bored or stuck in a groove. ‘I hate to keep my feet on the ground,’ she wrote. ‘I was first, and hope last to be, a gardener; it was an unanticipated combination of circumstances that led me to do professionally something I did once only as a relaxation, but much as I love doing it, I don’t like the groove to be too deep.’
Unlike Colney Park, which had a mature garden when they moved in, Park Gate was a blank canvas. ‘There had to be a good garden there but we had to find it,’ the loyal Walter Trower recalled. With help from students from Swanley, Connie and Trower launched themselves into a huge programme of landscaping around the farmhouse and outbuildings. The cobbled yard was turned into a lawn, the orchard of old fruit trees thinned, leaving just a few to make a dappled background to a sweep of herbaceous border and to form a grove between the lawn and the wild garden. Given its difficult soils and situation, it was not an easy garden. As Connie wrote, ‘My garden in Kent is exposed to the four winds of heaven.’
The new garden had to be practical, so most of the beds and borders were devoted to growing flowers for the business. Fortunately, there was enough land for Connie to be able to indulge in all her favourites: banks of lilac, swathes of haunting majestic lilies, imperial fritillaries and all kinds of tulips and iris. They erected a pergola which was soon smothered in mountain clematis, and created a fragrant philadelphus walk leading from the rose garden to the nursery: ‘The walk between those scented hedges is a pleasure which in itself would make the daily journey back from town worthwhile.’ Connie planted a triangular piece of ground with small limes for their sweet-smelling flowers which she liked to use in decorations. She insisted on mature trees being planted because she wanted to enjoy them before she grew too old. The limes were underplanted with blue, white and lilac-pink Scilla hispanica and she trained heavily scented honeysuckle over stumps of dead cherry trees in the orchard, where she sowed the long grass with wild sorrel, dog daisies, foxgloves and drifts of sweet rocket along with oriental poppies, ‘so flamingly, flaringly grand’. At the far end of the orchard, in a border dug out of the turf and backed by a rough field hedge of hawthorn, dog roses, spindleberry and open farmland, were planted Connie’s untidy, tangled, space-consuming ‘most favoured darlings’, the plants with which above all others her name would be associated – the ‘old’ roses of her memories and dreams.
Connie had been passionate about roses since her childhood romance with the black rose in Derbyshire. Fifty years later she was still writing about this fabled flower, which she came to think was probably a gallica called ‘Tuscany’, an old velvet rose of dark crimson-purple. It might equally have been the moss rose ‘Nuits de Young’, which bears blooms of the darkest possible maroon with blackish tints. In those days old roses were out of fashion and largely forgotten. Compared to the modern hybrids with their elegant and perfect blooms, old roses have more subtle colouring and texture, but a laxer habit, with flatter, more cabbage-shaped flowers. They are, however, extremely free-flowering, vigorous, hardy and foolproof. Best of all, they have the most delicious perfume. Their origins lost in antiquity, Connie called them the roses of poetry and song; reminiscent of illustrations in old books, of paintings and tapestries and cottage gardens, they appealed to her deep-seated sense of romance and nostalgia.
Some years earlier, through Sidney Bernstein, Connie had visited Sissinghurst and admired Vita Sackville-West’s rose gardens. But it was not until she saw the designer Norah Lindsay’s garden at Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire that she was inspired to start her own collection. Norah’s garden had, she wrote, a sense of ‘flourishing ease and naturalness’, an air of spontaneity in the planning which immediately appealed to her. There, all kinds of old-fashioned roses were flowering profusely and growing freely into graceful shapes along winding paths and up pillars and hedges; their perfume was ‘distinct and intoxicating’. Connie was excited by such a diversi
ty of colours, whether of the single rich-red and deep-pink roses or those that were striped and ‘delicately feathered as if with a fine brush’. She described standing under a cascade of blooms, surrounded by a sea of them, almost drowning in their scent. ‘This to me is what a rose garden should be,’ she wrote, ‘the apotheosis of the rose.’
Connie began her collection by buying plants from specialist growers in England, Ireland, Scotland and France. She searched in private gardens for ‘lost’ roses, such as ‘Vierge de Cléry’. An American friend from Virginia wrote to tell her about slaves who used to plant roses on the graves of their relatives. There was an old slave cemetery on her property and she sent Connie some cuttings of a rare variety she had found growing there. Gradually Connie learned about the different types and varieties of old roses: the centifolias, damasks, gallicas, albas and moss roses. Her favourite varieties were ‘Cardinal Richelieu’, ‘Charles de Mills’, ‘Nuits de Young’, ‘Tour de Malakoff’ and ‘Madame Isaac Pereire’ – all now hugely popular but barely known in Connie’s time.
The Sprys would live at Park Gate for longer than at any of their other houses, and it was to be Connie’s biggest challenge. Although those who knew her and read her books regarded her as a garden expert with an encyclopaedic knowledge of plants, she continued to think of herself as an amateur with much still to learn. She sought help and advice from anyone who would give it. Always open about her mistakes, she described how she had once planted a bed in solid blocks of flowers rather than in drifts: ‘The result was stiff and jerky, not the flowing, merging masses of colour I had hoped for.’ She still spent considerable time, far more than one might think she could spare from her many other commitments, travelling around the country, exploring any gardens that sounded interesting, searching for unusual plants and fresh ideas for her garden and her books. The trial grounds at Wisley were a valuable source of inspiration, while the regular Royal Horticultural Society flower shows at Vincent Square continued to be a vital meeting place. There she could discuss ‘curiosities’ and cultivation problems with the nurserymen. She visited many of them at their nurseries – Mr Hillier at Winchester, Messrs Notcutt at Woodbridge and Mr Constable at Tunbridge Wells – and regularly described and quoted all their plants and their views in her books. Several of her London clients owned country estates, and those with a genuine interest and knowledge of gardening invited Connie to stay. She was especially keen to see places with fine collections of rhododendrons, azaleas, magnolias, camellias and rare varieties of shrubs and trees, such as those in Captain Soames’s gardens at Sheffield Park in Sussex, laid out by Capability Brown. She always returned home from these visits laden with seeds, cuttings and ideas.