Eric & Stella Newton --impressions by his grand-daughter Josephine Hammond. July 2005

We--my real sister Jane and I used to visit him and his second wife, Stella, about once a year. We used to travel on our own by train from Barnham station to Victoria Station, where he’d meet us on the platform and immediately greet us with a kiss and an ice cream. I wasn’t used to kisses, so that part was more forgettable than the ice cream. Besides, I knew that we’d get a kiss from Stella too. Usually he took us to 3 Cumberland Gardens by taxi. That led me to believe he was rich!
For years I used to think that they lived in their own house. It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I discovered they were renting the Georgian building from the Lloyd-Baker Estates. But they treated it as if it were their own. Eric had laid a mosaic on the front doorstep. Inside, in the front hall was a Murano glass chandelier. To the right and taking up the whole hall wall, was a huge John Bratby oil called The Potting Shed. (The Greenhouse in Christies Catalogue S.G.) I remember when they bought it in the fifties. They had to crop it to fit it in. Oh how cheeky was that!

They’d painted much of the walls in the house in oils to cover up the cracks with a faux marble effect, a perfect background for all their paintings. The house floor was exceptionally uneven; perhaps there was subsidence. There were two pianos, one a boudoir grand, in the living room, and many, many paintings on every wall. I also remember a Calder pivoting mobile that I liked to play with.

In another part of the hall was a full-scale plan of one of his Holbrook mosaics. He’d also painted the dining room ceiling: Black, dark pink and gold. They’d used cork flooring in there too. Wherever one looked was a feast for the eyes. Stella always made the curtains. Unusual, appliquéd, some of them were.

A coal or anthracite-driven Aga cooker that was fed each morning by a neighbour who also was responsible for stoking the furnace in the cellar--central heating by hot radiators, dominated the red-tiled kitchen. Later, both Aga and furnace were changed over to oil.

Each year they made wine in the cellar. One summer Eric walked me to the local food market from whence we returned to the house by taxi with crates of grapes. I trod them in a barrel in the cellar later that day.

 
The kitchen always had a wonderful spicy smell to it. I suspect it was mixture of coffee, we drank strong expresso three times a day, demi-tasse with cream, and garlic and other herbs. We had green salads twice a day, with freshly made dressing, our job when we were there. In the fifties Eric and Stella boarded European students who did part of the cooking in return, I presumed, for a low or no rent. This is where I acquired my taste for gourmet food. We were always told to taste one mouthful of a meal that we didn’t like the look of!

The garden was walled. It was possessed by a huge pear tree, (unfortunately it blew down in the 90s.) Under it was a tiled table, and we used to eat lunch on it during the summer. There were several pieces of sculpture in the garden, including a granite lion and a modern aluminium work we called Nimrod. I wish I’d been left Nimrod in my will. It connects well with my memories.

If I visited on my own, it was usually that way in my mid-teens, the three of us would sit in the living room that first day and talk about what we should be taken to see, what had been awarded good reviews, what exhibition was worth seeing. The newspapers would be consulted and Eric and Stella might argue or discuss amongst themselves the various merits of each potential outing. It wasn’t necessarily to be a highbrow type of entertainment, they must have known I never saw movies in my home environment, so they took me, or arranged to have me taken to South Pacific, for example. Eric took Jane and me to see Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap when I was 13. One play I’ll always remember was Pinter’s The Caretaker with Alan Bates. It affected me in a way I couldn’t express to anyone. One of them always accompanied us to museums and art galleries. I always remember Eric taking me, a child, to various exhibitions, one in particular where he had to buy a painting for a hospital, and asking which one I would choose. Whenever he asked what I thought about paintings in exhibitions I never told him what I really thought. I was afraid to voice my opinions, having been brought up to believe, that as a child, they would account for nothing. I wish I had been able to explain this because he probably thought of me as pretty stupid!

Another memory, an influential one, at age 16, was when I visited them during the time they were attending the complete Wagner Ring Cycle at Covent Garden which entailed almost a week of evenings out. Of course, I didn’t go, but each evening during dinner before they left, they’d talk about the plot, the meaning, the way it was produced, talked about the symbolism. As an egocentric teen, I resented the fact that I was not included, but their behaviour conveyed to me that this was an extremely awe-inspiring and great work, and would deserve great attention when I was old enough. Yes, Wagner was important to them and would eventually be for me.

At the other end of the scale was Battersea Fun fair. Eric took Jane and me there, and he seemed genuinely interested in the almost kitschy (looking back on it) scenery of the grotto of the four elements, and the not-so-kitschy tree walk. He allowed me to ride the roller coaster 6 times in succession! Gave us ice creams, etc. He was like a male Fairy Godmother.

Eric used to smoke, outside the house. He made sure he had the opportunity, by going out to buy the bread every day, buying the cider and wine fairly frequently. I didn’t realize he’d been told not to smoke in the house, but his mother-in-law, Georgia, told me once, “Isn’t he clever? Every time he wants to smoke, he sucks a peppermint candy,” when really he was sucking the peppermint to mask the smell of the smoke!
Regarding Stella’s mother, Georgia, a remarkable woman who died aged 93. She told me she’d heard Liszt play. She had been a piano teacher and played every day, occasionally duets with Eric. One day, I was 13; I overheard her play a posthumous Chopin work. It was the first time, and would not be the last, that music made me cry.

A memorable and shocking experience.
Once, while I was visiting (age 15), they had a large party to which they’d invited a lot of well-known artists, musicians, including Sir Basil Spence. The day before, I had to take a bottle of black India ink and brush and paint the bald spots on the stair carpet. I remember finding a lot of interesting people to talk to, but unfortunately their names didn’t mean anything to me. Oh the ignorance of youth! If I hadn’t been so uneducated, I’d have written the guest list down.

I used to sleep up in the attic. Late into the night I’d hear Eric and Stella’s voices talking, discussing, and I’d think, “What a superb marriage. How well suited they are.” But I didn’t know they had some sad problems, problems I learned about in 1987 when Stella confided how Eric had been constantly unfaithful to her, how he’d forbidden her to have children knowing she really desired them. Strangely, two weeks before he died, he said to her, “I was very wrong not to let you have children.” He died in his London office of the Manchester Guardian. After his clothes had been returned to her, Stella found a love letter from his present mistress in his jacket pocket.

It surprised me that Eric died so young. He always moved fast, walked fast, almost swept along the pavements. Never gave the impression he was remotely old or doddery. He died four days after my first marriage--he and Stella had organized it at his cousin’s house in Altringham because my mother and stepfather had disowned me.

It’s odd. Not long before he died in 1965, he told me I was his favourite grandchild. If only I’d known earlier, if only I’d really talked, discussed, argued about the ways of the world with him. But in those days I was very afraid of men, and also felt inferior to them. Looking back on it, I could have allowed him to be my longed-for surrogate father, Ironic, since he, according to the psychoanalysts and Stella, felt abandoned by his own mother, and had spent the rest of his life searching for a substitute, hence the infidelities.

To Stella and Eric I owe my thanks, for my appreciation and enjoyment of the arts, of everything fine and beautiful.

Jo Hammond