Church and Patronage in 20TH Century Britain Walter Hussey and the Arts

HISTORIES OF THE SACRED AND SECULAR

Peter Webster Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000

Series Editor David Nash Department of History Oxford Brookes University Oxford, UK General Editor: Professor David Nash (Oxford Brookes University, UK) Series Description: This series refects the awakened and expanding profle of the history of religion within the academy in recent years. It intends publishing exciting new and high quality work on the history of religion and belief since 1700 and will encourage the production of interdisciplinary proposals and the use of innovative methodologies. The series will also welcome book proposals on the history of Atheism, Secularism, Humanism and unbelief/secularity and to encourage research agendas in this area alongside those in religious belief. The series will be happy to refect the work of new scholars entering the feld as well as the work of established scholars. The series welcomes proposals covering subjects in Britain, Europe, the United States and Oceania.

Editorial Board:

Professor Callum Brown (University of Glasgow, UK) Professor William Gibson (Oxford Brookes University, UK) Dr. Carole Cusack (University of Sydney, Australia) Professor Beverley Clack (Oxford Brookes University, UK) Dr. Bert Gasenbeek (Humanist University, Utrecht, Netherlands) Professor Paul Harvey (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, USA)

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14868 Peter Webster Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain

Walter Hussey and the Arts Peter Webster Independent Scholar Chichester, West Sussex, UK

Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000 ISBN 978-1-137-36909-3 ISBN 978-1-137-36910-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-36910-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944569

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations.

Cover image courtesy of West Sussex Record Offce (on behalf of the Dean of Chichester)

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom Acknowledgements

This book has been made possible by the generous assistance of a great many individuals and organisations, which it is a pleasure to acknowledge. The Walter Hussey Papers are here cited by courtesy of the Very Reverend the Dean of Chichester and with acknowledgements to the West Sussex Record Offce and the County Archivist. The permission of the WSRO and the County Archivist is also acknowledged in relation to the capitular records of the cathedral, and the episcopal records of the bishops of Chichester. In straitened times, the staff of the WSRO are a credit to their profession. The George Bell Papers are quoted by kind permission of the Librarian of Lambeth Palace. Thanks are also due to the staffs of the Church of England Record Centre, the Tate Gallery Archives and the archives of Pallant House Gallery for allowing access to their collections. My thanks are also due to those who generously gave of their time to be interviewed about Walter Hussey. They were: Hilary Bryan-Brown, David Burton Evans, James Simpson-Manser and Garth Turner. Images from the Walter Hussey Papers are reproduced by courtesy of the Very Reverend the Dean of Chichester and with acknowledgements to the West Sussex Record Offce and the County Archivist. The staff of Chichester Cathedral permitted me to reproduce several of their own images of the interior of the cathedral and the works of art therein, which may be viewed still today. The cathedral is open daily with free

v vi Acknowledgements entry; further details may be found at www.chichestercathedral.org.uk. The vicar of the church of St Matthew, Northampton likewise allowed me to reproduce an image of Graham Sutherland’s Crucifxion, which permission I gratefully acknowledge. I also acknowledge, with thanks, the permission of David Stancliffe to quote from a letter of his to Hussey. My thanks are due to conference and seminar audiences at the Anglo- Catholic History Society, the Ecclesiastical History Society and the Institute of Historical Research, to which portions of the work have been presented. Andrew Chandler and Ian Jones read the draft; their comments and questions improved the work a great deal, and thanks are also due to the anonymous peer reviewer. Becky Sleven carried out invalu- able editorial work at an important time, and the book was proofread with customary thoroughness by Kathryn Price of Crosses and Dots. The responsibility for errors and omissions remains, of course, that of the author. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the help of Molly Beck and Oliver Dyer at Palgrave Macmillan, and the series editor, David Nash. None of the work would have been possible without the support of my wife Sarah, who was there at the very beginning, and of Benjamin, Thomas and Daniel, to whom the book is dedicated. Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The Formation of a Patron 17

3 The 1943 Jubilee festival at Northampton 49

4 Music, Art and Poetry: 1944–1955 85

5 The Religious Arts on a Rising Tide: People, Media, Networks 119

6 New Visual Art for Chichester 147

7 Chichester Music 187

8 Cathedral, City and Diocese 213

9 Legacy 227

Bibliography 237

Index 249

vii Abbreviations

CEMA Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts CERC Church of England Record Centre CIO Church Information Offce DAC Diocesan Advisory Committee [for Faculties] Grove New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd edition, Grove Music Online) LPL Lambeth Palace Library ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edition) OUP Oxford University Press PCC Parochial Church Council WSRO West Sussex Record Offce

ix List of Images

Image 1.1 Hussey at some point in the late 1940s or early 1950s 3 Image 2.1 Hussey shortly after his ordination 23 Image 3.1 St Matthew’s Northampton, viewed from Collingwood Road 50 Image 3.2 The interior of St Matthew’s looking towards the high altar 53 Image 3.3 Hussey, Benjamin Britten (far right) and some of Hussey’s neighbours and friends in Chichester, in the Deanery garden, probably late 1950s 70 Image 3.4 Madonna and Child by Henry Moore, as viewed from the seats in the nave 78 Image 3.5 The Madonna and Child by Henry Moore, probably 1944 82 Image 4.1 Hussey, Kirsten Flagstad and Harold Craxton outside St Matthew’s, probably 1947 99 Image 4.2 Crucifxion by Graham Sutherland, in the church of St Matthew, Northampton 115 Image 5.1 George Bell and Hussey welcoming guests to the Bishop’s Palace in Chichester, mid-1950s 138 Image 5.2 Chichester Cathedral from the north-east 143 Image 6.1 Hussey and Kathleen Sutherland on holiday in Austria, late 1950s 155 Image 6.2 The Mary Magdalene chapel, with Sutherland’s painting, candlesticks by Geoffrey Clarke and the altar by Robert Potter 158 Image 6.3 Noli me tangere by Graham Sutherland 160 Image 6.4 The pulpit by Geoffrey Clarke in the nave of Chichester Cathedral, 1960s. The right-hand bay of the restored Arundel screen is visible on the left 164

xi xii List of Images

Image 6.5 The colours of the Piper tapestry as viewed from the nave through the Arundel screen 173 Image 6.6 The window by Marc Chagall in the north quire aisle 181 Image 7.1 Hussey in his study, as he approached retirement. A maquette for the Henry Moore Madonna and Child at Northampton is visible on the shelf behind him 210 Image 8.1 Chichester Cathedral viewed from the gates of the Deanery 216 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

March 1977 saw a Service of Thanksgiving for the life and work of Benjamin Britten in Westminster Abbey in the presence of the Queen Mother. The music chosen refected the life of Baron Britten, and among the organ music played before the service was a piece which connects the foremost British composer of his generation with the subject of this book. The Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria had been commissioned by Walter Hussey for the patronal festival of the parish church of St Matthew, Northampton in 1946, as had the anthem Rejoice in the Lamb for the same festival three years earlier. The text of Rejoice in the Lamb was read by Britten’s partner, Peter Pears, in the Abbey service. It was this commissioning that had led to a correspondence and friendship lasting over thirty years, and, ultimately, to Pears’ request that Hussey give the address at the service.1 Walter Hussey is chiefy known for an extraordinary sequence of commissions of contemporary art and music, frstly for Northampton from 1943 and, between 1955 and 1977, for Chichester Cathedral of which he was dean (Image 1.1). The names read as a roll-call of the artistic and musical world of post-war Britain: Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, John Piper in the visual arts; amongst musicians, Britten, Lennox Berkeley, Gerald Finzi, Michael Tippett, William Walton, to name only a few.

1 Pears to WH, 11 January 1977, at MS Hussey 300.

Hussey was also able to secure work from artists from overseas, most notably Leonard Bernstein and Marc Chagall. It was as a result of these commissions that, by the time of the Abbey service for Britten, the soon-to-retire Hussey had attained the status of grandee in the matter of the church and the arts. Hussey was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1976,2 and in 1977, an honorary Doctor of Letters of the young University of Sussex, which had also so honoured Henry Moore, Duncan Grant and the cellist Mtsislav Rostropovich.3 Vice-Chancellor Denys Wilkinson spoke of Hussey’s ‘contribution to the onward reach of humanity’ by his ‘bringing into our churches… the fnest of modern art to delight, stimulate, for some to infuriate or mystify; but always to invigorate the faith that is the matrix of the art.’4 Even allowing for the celebratory nature of the occasion, there was, for Wilkinson, even in the mid-1970s still a clear and lively connection between modern art and the national faith, exem- plifed by Hussey’s patronage. Hussey’s achievement was not only noted by institutions, however, but also by prominent fgures in the British establishment. Shortly after his retirement, Kenneth, Lord Clark, critic, broadcaster, and sometime director of the National Gallery, recalled their long collaboration, describing Hussey as ‘aesthete, impressario [sic] and indomitable persuader’.5 A few years later, it was the newspaper proprietor Hugh Cudlipp who appears to have persuaded his friend George Weidenfeld to publish Hussey’s memoir Patron of Art in 1985.6 Since his retirement and death, Hussey has been noted numerous times in the mainstream media, in continuity with the attention Northampton and Chichester both received while he was at work.7

2 Eric Lyons (president of RIBA) to WH, 22 April 1976, at MS Hussey 107. 3 Graduation ceremony programme at MS Hussey 107. 4 University of Sussex (1978) University of Sussex Annual Report 1977–1978 (Brighton: University of Sussex), p. 54. 5 K. Clark (1975) ‘Dean Walter Hussey. A Tribute to his Patronage of the Arts’ in W. Hussey (ed.) Chichester 900 (Chichester: Chichester Cathedral) pp. 68–72. 6 Correspondence at MS Hussey 281. 7 Instances include the BBC2 documentary ‘Patron of Art’ in 1985, and the BBC Radio 4 documentary ‘The Muse of St Matthew’s’: Radio Times, 31 October 1985, p. 46, Radio Times, 12 October 1989, p. 90. 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Image 1.1 Hussey at some point in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 65

Within the churches, too, Hussey enjoyed a formidable reputation for his work in the arts. At a time when most cathedrals were ‘so unspeak- ably unimaginative & dreary’, David Stancliffe (who was later to lead another of the cathedrals, Portsmouth), thought that Hussey had ena- bled ‘the whole liturgy of building, ornament, rite & music to articulate our worship as a coherent whole.’8 Eric Kemp, Hussey’s bishop in Chichester from 1973, refected on the role played by his predecessor- but-one, George Bell, in bringing Hussey to Chichester in 1955 (see Chap. 5). How thankful Bell would have been, Kemp thought, to have lived to see the cathedral as Hussey had made it.9 Kemp was the prime

8 David Stancliffe was chaplain to Clifton College, Bristol, and later became Provost of Portsmouth, then bishop of Salisbury. Stancliffe to WH, 15 July 1967, at MS Hussey 108. 9 Kemp to WH, 28 October 1976, at MS Hussey 108. 4 P. Webster mover in an unsuccessful attempt to have Hussey included by the Queen in the Birthday Honours for 1977.10 In addition to his contemporary repute, Walter Hussey now enjoys a formidable reputation among both critics and artistically-minded Anglicans as perhaps the most signifcant patron of art for the church of the twentieth century. The publication of the memoir Patron of Art in 1985 has been matched by a general growth in interest in the relations between theology and the arts.11 A 1993 exhibition marking the centenary of St Matthew’s was accompanied by a catalogue with articles by the art historian Frances Spalding; the theologian and Dean of King’s College Cambridge, George Pattison; and Rowan Williams, later to be archbishop of Canterbury; all refecting directly, or indirectly, on Hussey’s legacy.12 For one commentator, Hussey single-handedly ‘turned the tide against Anglican neglect of modern art’.13 In the view of the critic Richard Cork, ‘the ghastliness of so much modern church art testifes…to the excruciating judgement of the clergymen who commission it.’ Hussey alone stood out in a ‘wasteland of hackneyed stained glass, insipid carvings and pedestrian altarpieces.’14 Striking in its absence in the midst of all this, however, is any signifcant critical study of Hussey’s life and work as a whole. Apart from a single short, but perceptive, article by a former colleague, Garth Turner, Hussey has attracted almost no sustained work in the literature on either church history or cultural history more widely.15 The musicological and

10 Kemp to Kenneth Clark, 4 March 1977, at Tate Gallery Archive, Kenneth Clark Collection, TGA 8812/1/3/1432. At Kemp’s request, Henry Moore also wrote to Prime Minister Callaghan on Hussey’s behalf: Moore to Callaghan, 4 April 1977, as copied at WSRO, Ep. Acc.11268. 11 See, for instance, G. Howes (2007) The art of the sacred. An introduction to the aesthetics of art and belief (London: I.B. Tauris), pp. 59–74. 12 T. Devonshire Jones (ed.) (1993) Images of Christ. Religious Iconography in Twentieth Century British Art (Northampton: St Matthew’s Centenary Art Committee). 13 A. Sinclair (1990) The need to give. The patrons and the arts (London: Sinclair Stevenson) pp. 127–128. 14 R. Cork (1990) ‘St Matthew Passions’, The Listener, 19 July, p. 33. 15 G. Turner (1992) ‘“Aesthete, impresario and indomitable persuader”: Walter Hussey at St Matthew’s, Northampton and Chichester Cathedral’ Studies in Church History, 28, 523–535; this is supplemented in G. Turner (2011), Cathedrals and change in the twentieth century. Aspects of the life of the cathedrals of the Church of England with special reference to the Cathedral Commissions of 1925, 1958, 1992 (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester), pp. 166–72. See also A. Doig (1996) ‘Architecture and performance: Dean Walter Hussey and the arts’, Theology, 99:787, 16–22. 1 INTRODUCTION 5 art-historical literature, for the most part, confnes him to a walk-on part in the main story of the particular artist or composer. In the cases where Hussey is more prominently featured, such as in Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Britten, the story is written from ‘the other end’, and often without use of the Hussey Papers, cataloguing of which was only completed in 1997.16 In the particular history of patronage and collecting, Hussey is frequently noted, but again in passing.17 Amongst church historians, much greater attention has been paid to the other most signifcant fgure in Anglican artistic patronage, George Bell. Dean of Canterbury and (from 1929) bishop of Chichester, Bell has attracted two full-length biographies, along with numerous substantial critical studies.18 The greater interest in Bell is easy to explain, since Ronald Jasper’s biography appeared at a time in which most bishops of any repute could still expect to be thus noted. Bell’s feld of vision was much wider, and his interest in the arts was but one part of a larger syn- thesis, taking in nothing less than the whole of national life. Bell was also both articulate and prolifc in print which, as we shall see, cannot be said of Hussey. This general neglect is in spite of Hussey’s careful marshalling of his literary remains, now preserved in the West Sussex Record Offce in Chichester, and needs some explanation. Part of it may be found in the papers themselves. Despite Hussey’s evident and self-conscious cura- tion of his papers for posterity, he rarely retained copies of his own letters, and so much of the correspondence is one-sided. As such, Hussey often appears only as refracted through the views of his correspondents: a valuable yet insuffcient perspective. In some cases, Hussey’s side of these exchanges may be reconstructed from editions of the letters

16 H. Carpenter (1992) Benjamin Britten. A biography (London: Faber); see also R. Berthoud (1982) Graham Sutherland. A biography (London: Faber & Faber) pp. 113–114; J. Golden and T.J. McCann, eds. (1997) The Dean Hussey Papers. A catalogue (Chichester: West Sussex County Council). 17 Sinclair, The need to give, pp. 127–128; J. Stourton and C. Sebag Montefore (2012) The British as art collectors. From the Tudors to the present (London: Scala), p. 305. 18 The authoritative work on Bell is now A. Chandler (2016) George Bell, bishop of Chichester. Church, state and resistance in the age of dictatorship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans): on the arts in particular, see pp. 23–25, 158–9; R.C.D. Jasper (1967) George Bell, Bishop of Chichester (London: OUP); A. Chandler, ed., (2012) The Church and Humanity. The Life and Work of George Bell, 1883–1958 (Farnham: Ashgate). 6 P. Webster of his correspondents, or from other archives, but in the great majority of cases, it is lost. The volume of sermons, addresses and other writings in extenso in the Hussey Papers is also very small, refecting Hussey’s apparent practice of speaking only from notes without preparing a full script. In one sense, the account Hussey gave of himself in Patron of Art meets a number of the requirements from such a study.19 It gives a detailed account of the making of the most signifcant of his commissions, and reproduces a number of important letters and other documents. However, Patron of Art in many ways obscures as much as it reveals. In it, Hussey eschewed almost entirely the question of his motives for pursuing the task with such tenacity. Absent also, as his successor as dean observed, is any sustained theological refection on the relationship of the arts and the church, or of truth and beauty. Robert Holtby also sagely noted the lack of any sense of the place of all these works of art in the liturgical action of the church.20 Patron of Art also begins with the frst commissions and, in doing so, obliterates Hussey’s formation as a lover of art and as a priest—his frst 34 years. More pro- saically, it is also diffcult now to locate a copy, including in many major research libraries. It is also, in places, verifably inaccurate in matters of fact, and is (as one reviewer, the poet and publisher Christopher Reid tartly noted) ‘a dull and inadequate book…lacking any sustained argument, content to itemize his successes chapter by chapter as they arise, and without any serious attempt at evaluative discrimination’.21 It is not known whether Hussey saw the review, but such evaluation was neither his intention nor arguably within his capabilities; his concern was to document. Hussey’s life and career ft awkwardly within the conventions of clerical biography. Although conscientious enough, Hussey could make no claim to having gifts as a pastor, teacher, preacher or leader that were either exceptional or exemplary: the kind of gifts which tend to be the stuff of the genre. A strong argument might be made for Hussey’s

19 W. Hussey (1985) Patron of Art. The Revival of a Great Tradition Among Modern Artists (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson). 20 Robert Holtby, reviewing Patron of Art, in the Chichester Cathedral Journal (1985), 6–7. 21 C. Reid (1985) ‘Church commissioner’, Times Literary Supplement, 7 June 1985, 640. 1 INTRODUCTION 7 insight in seeing the necessity of contemporary art as a central mode of communication between church and world. However, this vision, though prophetic in its way, is not that of the traditional clerical biography. Hussey also never had a close collaborator, a confdant, amanuen- sis, chaplain or mentor, who could take on the task of documenting the work of the great man. Archbishop Randall Davidson had such a fgure in George Bell, once his chaplain; the controversial bishop of Woolwich John A.T. Robinson had his friend and collaborator Eric James.22 And these were bishops; it is a rare cathedral dean who has been thought worthy of a biography without some other particular claim to notewor- thiness, the paradigm case being the ‘Red Dean’, Hewlett Johnson of Canterbury.23 What, then, is the signifcance of Walter Hussey, and the reasons for examining his life and work? Most obviously, it is to amplify, augment (and in some cases, correct) Hussey’s own account of a unique series of commissions, made over more than thirty years, and including works of great import in the development of the British arts. The Hussey Papers are a splendidly rich source for studying the commissioning, production and performance of the contemporary arts. Little of this material has been fully integrated into the existing scholarship in the musicological and art-historical felds. They also give a vivid picture, meticulously preserved, of the relationships between one exceptional clergyman and his commissionees, many of whom became friends. Hussey’s story is very much a story of an individual rather than of the agent of an institution. In much writing from the present-day perspective of a Church of England with its cathedrals crammed with works of contemporary art, Hussey has been seen as a voice in the wilderness, who prepared the way for a welcome, and indeed essential, rediscovery of a contemporary language for the Church’s message. This story of dogged effort in the face of philistinism and ignorance is the closest thing there is to a meta-narrative of the churches and the arts in post-war Britain. But it is a story established by dint of omission, since the enterprise of integrating the religious arts into the study of recent British religious history is in its

22 G. Bell (1935) Randall Davidson (London: OUP); E. James (1987) A Life of Bishop John A.T. Robinson. Scholar, pastor, prophet (London: Collins). 23 R. Hughes (1987) The Red Dean (Worthing: Churchman). 8 P. Webster infancy. A start has been made in relation to church music and the visual arts; in religious drama, the work has barely begun, and much of the fundamental groundwork of cataloguing works of art, music and drama, and locating them in their local commissioning contexts, is still incomplete.24 To document Hussey’s patronage is to provide key signposts in this terra incognita. More broadly than this, Hussey’s career is a case study in the assumptions of the Catholic wing of the Church of England about the nature of the arts, their relationship with the church, and (by implication) the relationship of creativity and the work of man to the life of society. These are outlined in Chap. 2. Hussey was not a theologian in the sense that he never attempted to systematise and analyse, in any depth, what he was trying to achieve. This can be seen in the repetitive and formulaic nature of his few published writings, Patron of Art, and his unpublished sermons and addresses. However, he lived and worked through a succes- sion of remarkable moments in the intellectual development of English Christianity. The social and economic crises of the inter-war period, the Second World War and the post-war period prompted successive bouts of intense internal debate over the nature of ‘national religion’, and the complex, but vital, connection between it and the mainstream in culture and the arts.25 Hussey’s career was one possible outworking of a theological movement. In Garth Turner’s phrase, Hussey was a ‘natural applied theologian of the Incarnation’.26

24 The starting point for religious drama remains K. Pickering (1985) Drama in the Cathedral. The Canterbury Festival Plays, 1928–1948 (Worthing: Churchman). For music, there is M. Thomas (2015) English cathedral music and liturgy in the twentieth century (Farnham: Ashgate), along with H. Davies (1996) Worship and theology in England: volume 6: Crisis and Creativity, 1965-present (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans). There is no equiva- lent in the other arts of the indispensable M. Day (1982) Modern Art in Church. A gazetteer of twentieth-century works of art in English and Welsh churches (London: Royal College of Art). 25 See, inter alia, J. Maiden (2009) National religion and the Prayer Book Controversy, 1927–1928 (Woodbridge: Boydell); M. Grimley (2007) ‘The Religion of Englishness: Puritanism, Providentialism, and “National Character,” 1918–1945’, Journal of British Studies, 46(4), 884–906; On this connection in one particular context, see P. Webster (2008) ‘Beauty, utility and “Christian civilisation”: the Church of England and war memorials, 1940–47’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 44;2, 199–211. 26 Turner, ‘Cathedrals and change’, p. 169. 1 INTRODUCTION 9

Alongside these questionings within the churches, the period between Rejoice in the Lamb (1943) and the Chichester Service by William Walton (1975) saw revolutionary changes in the relationship between the churches and both the people of Britain and the state. There was an emptying of the moral law of its specifcally Christian content, in relation to abortion, divorce and capital punishment amongst other things, and (in the shape of the General Synod) a redefnition of the relationship between the established church and the populace at large.27 Although the precise sequence of events and their interpretation are debated, there were dramatic falls in the levels of church attendance and affliation, which caused acute alarm within the churches.28 Both preceding this collapse, and being sharpened by it, was a weakening of the church’s confdence in its own ability to communicate and minister effectively in this new world.29 Part of the religious crisis of the period was one of religious language, and its ability to communicate in a manner meaningful to ‘Modern Man’, now come of age, but still questing for encounter with the divine. Whether the crisis was real or in part talked into existence, as recent work has suggested, the sense of crisis impelled some to search for new modes of mission, and the contemporary arts were seized upon as a means to that end.30 If words were no longer securely meaningful, then perhaps the arts provided an alternative language. Not for nothing did the cover of the iconic paperback edition from the SCM Press of John A.T. Robinson’s Honest to God bear the image of a modernist work of art. If the 1960s did indeed witness the discursive death of Christian

27 The literature on the frst point, in particular, is large, but an overview may be found in P. Webster (2015) Archbishop Ramsey. The shape of the church (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 65–90, 49–63. 28 The classic statement is C. Brown (2009) The Death of Christian Britain. Understanding secularisation 1800–2000, 2nd edn, (London: Routledge), pp. 170–192. See also J. Garnett, M. Grimley, A. Harris, W. Whyte, S. Williams, eds. (2006) Redefning Christian Britain. Post 1945 perspectives (London: SCM Press); C. Field (2015) Britain’s last religious revival? Quantifying belonging, behaving and believing in the long 1950s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). 29 On this collapse of confdence, see H. McLeod (2007) The religious crisis of the 1960s (Oxford: OUP), pp. 188–214. 30 S. Brewitt-Taylor (2013) ‘The Invention of a ‘Secular Society’? Christianity and the Sudden Appearance of Secularization Discourses in the British National Media, 1961– 1964’, Twentieth Century British History 24:3, 327–350. 10 P. Webster

Britain, as Callum Brown has suggested, then Hussey was one example of an attempt at resuscitation. In addition to this religious change, the means by which taste in the arts was shaped and determined underwent successive revolutions and counter-revolutions in the post-war period, as did the very purpose of art itself. The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, and its successor, the Arts Council were a bold annexation by the state of the patronage of the arts. Working in tandem with the BBC, this was a vision of a benefcent establishment raising the horizons of the people by the provision of work that neither private patronage nor the commercial market would support.31 But almost immediately there were challenges to this particular understanding of from where the authority to determine taste should be derived. The challenge came, in part, from the continued growth of commercial markets, not least in publishing, broadcasting and in recorded music, which could operate free of such central direction.32 Equally signifcant was a growing emphasis on individual experience and (in Charles Taylor’s term) authenticity, in religion, ethics and in the arts. It is possible to overstress the anti-establishment tendency of the ‘long Sixties’, but the entitlement to ‘do one’s own thing’, both as creator and as consumer, applied in the arts too.33 This study examines the degree to which Hussey’s patronage depended on a vision of discerning patron, authoritative critic and notable artist working in tandem, disseminating new art downwards to a grateful, if uncompre- hending, public. This way of working, successful in the 1940s, was by the 1970s no longer ft for purpose.

31 On CEMA, see F.M. Leventhal (1990) ‘“The best for the most”: CEMA and state sponsorship of the arts in wartime, 1939–1945’, Twentieth Century British History, 1:3, 289–317; on the Arts Council, see A. Sinclair (1995) Arts and cultures. The history of 50 years of the Arts Council of Great Britain (London: Sinclair Stevenson); on the BBC, see H. Carpenter (1996) The Envy of the World. Fifty years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson). 32 B. Foss (2007) War paint. Art, war, state and identity in Britain, 1939–1945 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 194; a sense of the diversity of makers of taste in the post-war period may be gained from the essays in I. Morra and R. Gossedge, eds (2016) The New Elizabethan Age. Culture, society and national identity after World War II (London: I.B. Tauris). 33 For a general account of this, see A. Marwick (1998) The sixties (Oxford, OUP), passim; on the turn to authenticity and experience in religious terms, see J. Garnett et al. (2006) ‘Experience’ in Garnett et al. (eds.), Redefning Christian Britain, pp. 21–34. 1 INTRODUCTION 11

The period was also one of general cultural fracture, both within the classical arts and between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. In music, this was, in part, due to the turn to the avant garde that British classical music had taken, but among practitioners of the ‘high’ forms of each art there was a pursuit of an ever wider variety of disparate styles, some of which called into question the very nature of the art itself. In the visual arts, the post-war period saw a return to abstraction after the neo-romantic revival of fgurative art, not least due to the infuence of the American abstract expressionists. Harder to come to terms with was the more fundamental pushing of the boundaries represented by pop art, op art and ‘New Generation’ sculpture, followed, in turn, by minimalism and conceptual art as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s. In the theatre, the conservative post-war revival in verse drama represented by T.S. Eliot and Christopher Fry was soon confronted by the realism of John Osborne or Edward Bond, but also with the more direct challenge to the nature of the theatre itself posed by the Theatre Workshop, Harold Pinter, or Samuel Beckett. These various developments were not clearly linear or successive, although lines of descent and infuence may be traced between them.34 But the tendency was centrifugal, and to a new extent. This rapid decentring of the ‘high’ arts posed diffculties for those in the churches and outside who wished to place Anglican patronage at the centre of the mainstream of national cultural life. By the time of Hussey’s retirement, it was less than clear where that centre might be. This was also a period in which the volume, availability and reach of popular forms of art, particularly in music, greatly increased, and the churches were also engaged in vigorous debate over, and experimentation in, the adoption of these forms for their own purposes. If the post- war churches had lost the ability to speak to the people, then perhaps a new language—a quotidian, popular language—was needed. Anglicans variously embraced, ignored or rejected popular forms of music for worship. Church pop was viewed as either a means with which to make contact with young people to whom the traditional languages of the church apparently meant little, or a misguided attempt to curry popularity at

34 The literature on each art is now very considerable, but accessible general introduc- tions include F. Spalding (1986) British Art since 1900 (London: Thames and Hudson); M. Billington (2007) State of the Nation. British theatre since 1945 (London: Faber); A. Ross (2007) The rest is noise. Listening to the twentieth century (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux). 12 P. Webster the expense of good taste.35 In this, as in many respects, the career of Walter Hussey affords the historian a unique opportunity to examine one sphere in which the church met, resisted, negotiated with, or capitulated to forces of change in the society in which it was located.

The Structure of the Book Chapter 2 traces Hussey’s formation: the son of a clergyman who progressed through public school, Oxford, and the Anglo-Catholic Cuddesdon College to a curacy in London. It also examines his early aesthetic development, as a viewer, listener, amateur musician and artist, all in the context of Anglican theologies of the arts of the 1920s, and the examples of ecclesiastical patronage that others set. It argues that his understanding of the arts in relation to culture and of the right form of patronage were both present in their essentials before he began his work at Northampton, as were his particular enthusiasms and artistic blind spots. Chapters 3 and 4 together examine the full record of patronage for Northampton, beginning with the jubilee festival of the church in 1943 (in Chap. 3), and the subsequent commissions that continued until his departure for Chichester in 1955 (Chap. 4). Unparalleled in any British church of the time, these included sculpture from Henry Moore, painting from Graham Sutherland, poetry from W.H. Auden, and music from Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, Gerald Finzi and Lennox Berkeley amongst others. Those twelve years also saw the establishment of Hussey’s characteristic modus operandi, as he created ex nihilo a network of supportive critics, clergy and key players in the spheres of art, music and broadcasting. The two chapters examine, in particular, the critical and public reactions to the Moore and Sutherland works, and show that the debates the two pieces provoked went to the very heart of what religious art was, and what it was for. Chapter 5 places Hussey’s growing renown in the changed context of the immediate post-war period. Whilst the characteristic Catholic understanding of the nature of culture was mostly unaltered by the War, Hussey’s project was now also framed by the need for reconstruction,

35 I. Jones and P. Webster (2006) ‘Anglican “Establishment” Reactions to “Pop” Church Music in England, c.1956–1991’, Studies in Church History, 42, 429–441; I. Jones and P. Webster (2006) ‘Expressions of Authenticity: Music for Worship’ in Garnett et al. (eds.), Redefning Christian Britain, pp. 50–62. 1 INTRODUCTION 13 both physical and (as some saw it) cultural and spiritual. The chapter describes a moment at which a new settlement between the church and the arts seemed possible, supported by a growth in media coverage, scholarly interest and exhibitions. It also details two key relationships in Hussey’s network: with Kenneth Clark, perhaps the most infuential individual in British art, and George Bell, bishop of Chichester, the other most signifcant fgure in Anglican patronage of the arts in the period. It was Bell who brought Hussey to Chichester in 1955, a cathedral in a diocese in which Bell had done signifcant work in relation to the arts, but that was itself not quite ready for a project such as Hussey’s. Hussey’s commissions of new visual art and new music for Chichester are examined in Chaps. 6 and 7 respectively. Chapter 6 shows that rather than continuing to engage with the youngest British artists, Hussey continued to patronise an older generation: his own generation in fact, and indeed an older one in the case of Marc Chagall. Whilst highly effective in their own right, the works as a whole strike a less radical note than the Northampton pair from 1944–1946. In the case of music, the fnal compositions in the 1970s, from the venerable fgures of William Walton and Lennox Berkeley, have a similarly conservative favour. However, the commissions from Bryan Kelly, James Bernard, William Albright and Leonard Bernstein show a more consistent engagement with contemporary trends in composition and, in particular, the revolution in ‘church pop’ then underway. Hussey’s time as dean was one of searching, indeed existential questioning of the very purpose of the cathedrals within the church, in their urban environments, and as destinations for tourists. The whole of Hussey’s career was a response to these challenges by one particular means; Chap. 8 examines the rest of his record as dean, and argues that his overwhelming focus on the arts was pursued to the detriment of other areas of the cathedral’s life. The book ends with a refection on the nature of Hussey’s model of patronage. Hussey did inspire others during his career, and immediately following, to commission new works for churches. But Chap. 9 argues that Hussey’s success was in large part due to his personal qualities; his work was not as a distant, demanding patron, but as a friend and collaborator, and as an unoffcial chaplain to those with whom he worked. As such, his way of working was not easily codifed into a model that could easily be transferred to other contexts, and the more public and institutional way in which the churches have come to work in the very recent 14 P. Webster past is perhaps an acknowledgment of the fact. More fundamentally, Hussey’s work was based on a Catholic understanding of the relationship between national religion and culture, formed before the Second World War, but given new impetus by it, which became hard to sustain as both the arts and the position of the churches changed during the long Sixties. Those in the present-day churches who would see a live tradition of ecclesiastical patronage have needed to look elsewhere for their justifcation. Some particular notes on the scope and intentions of the book are necessary. To begin with, it is no way intended as a biography of Hussey as such, but a study of his patronage of the arts. Along the way, it details some of the circumstances of Hussey’s life and aspects of his character, particularly in Chap. 2, but only as a means of elucidating the main theme. However, it may in fact be the case that the book contains a large proportion of the material which should form a biography proper, since it argues that Hussey’s whole existence, both professional and personal, was taken up with his appreciation of the arts. It is also hoped that the book contains much that will be of interest to historians of the fne arts and of music, as part of the biographies of the artists and composers involved and as a study both of a particular kind of patronage and of the criteria by which critics and the public assessed the religious arts. It is, however, most emphatically not a work of art history or of musicology, both of which are beyond the expertise of the author. Whatever critical judgements it records on the works themselves are based gratefully on the work of others better qualifed to make them. While it necessarily discusses some issues of iconography, it does not attempt to place the works either in relation to earlier Christian art, or to trends in the art of the time. The study also very consciously resists any reading of the works to which Hussey’s patronage gave rise as, in some way, a voicing of the Church of England as a whole, or indeed as a coherent body of artistic work in itself. To make the latter case would be to attribute far greater infuence to Hussey as a patron than the sources could possibly support. Hussey gave space and support to individual artists so that they might respond to Christian themes, some of which he suggested or helped the artist to choose. Their responses, however, were each according to their own faculties and temperaments; Hussey’s direct infuence on the fnished work was necessarily very limited. As to the frst point, Hussey’s achievement was a singular, indeed idiosyncratic one. While it drew on 1 INTRODUCTION 15 broad principles articulated by others, it was not shaped in its details to any great degree by anyone within the Church of England, and Chapter 9 shows that it did not produce a means of working that could easily be emulated. Hussey’s career was ultimately sui generis, one man’s response to a particular set of pressures and stimuli. His work resists any classifca- tion as representatively Anglican. Finally, to what extent was the body of work produced by his patronage in some sense British (or English), however the terms may be defned? The work of Brian Foss has shown the work of the War Artists Advisory Committee to be, in part, an attempt at ‘popularising a unifying and elevating national taste…conceived in terms of a specifcally British version of contemporary art.’36 As will be seen, there was certainly some signifcant crossover of people between the WAAC and Hussey’s network, not least Moore, Sutherland, Piper and Kenneth Clark. However, the engagement with Bernstein and Chagall in later years gives the lie to the idea that Hussey sought to recreate a national religious art. Even if others were sometimes ready to gloss the works in national terms, the theme is muted, and the connection is largely absent from Hussey’s own speaking and writing. His concern was with a Christian art, European and North American, rather than a national one.

36 Foss, War paint, p. 5. CHAPTER 2

The Formation of a Patron

One of the frustrations of both the Hussey Papers and Patron of Art is the scarcity of material from which to reconstruct Hussey’s formation. He was born in 1909, the younger son of John Rowden Hussey, vicar of St Matthew’s Northampton from its foundation in 1893, and his wife, born Lilian Mary Atherton. Rowden Hussey was the son of a gentleman farmer from Wiltshire, who was also a churchwarden and infuenced by John Wordsworth, bishop of Salisbury. After tuition from Wordsworth himself, schooling at Marlborough College, and then Salisbury Theological College, Rowden Hussey was ordained in 1888, and soon after came to take charge of a new mission church in a new suburb of Northampton.1 Walter Hussey’s elder brother, Christopher Rowden Hussey, was also ordained in the Church of England, in 1931, a short while before Hussey. Little evidence remains of Hussey’s schooling at the Knoll, a preparatory school at Woburn Sands, now near Milton Keynes. A small school, it had been founded with seven pupils in 1892 by Edward F. Miller, returned from Ceylon where he had been archdeacon of Colombo. H.E. Ryle, later bishop of Winchester, was one of the frst parents to send a child to the school. It was still headed by a clergyman, F.F. Hort, when Hussey arrived, and the pupils all attended the parish church on Sundays.

1 M.C. Harrison (1993) The centenary history of St Matthew’s church and parish, Northampton (Edinburgh: Pentland), p. 1.

A photograph of the school chapel shows a plain space, which ftted the relatively undistinguished building in which it was located.2 From The Knoll, Hussey won a scholarship to Marlborough College in 1922. In 1924, he was confrmed in the college chapel, and took his frst communion shortly after in Northampton from the hands of his father. Slightly older than Hussey, but friendly with brother Christopher, was John Betjeman; also at the school at the same time were the poet Louis Macneice and the art historian Anthony Blunt. Betjeman’s biographer, A.N. Wilson, noted that the hearty ethos of a place such as Marlborough, as well as the spartan conditions that Betjeman later recorded in his Summoned by Bells, can hardly have been congenial to a young aesthete.3 The fact that Hussey was a keen hockey player may have given him some cover, and his continuing for a while to play the game for a team of Old Marlburians, captained by the bishop of London, suggests that his time there was not unhappy.4 In any case, he was able to fnd some things at Marlborough to occupy his imagination. As Garth Turner observed, Hussey progressed through a series of Gothic Revival buildings in his passage from Northampton to Marlborough, Keble College, Cuddesdon College, St Mary Abbots and back to Northampton.5 The chapel at Marlborough was the subject of photographs Hussey took in 1923, as was St Matthew’s.6 A sketch book, dating from the years at Marlborough, contains several capable drawings and watercolours, including one of the choir of St Matthew’s.7 From Marlborough, Hussey went up to Keble College, Oxford in 1927, to read politics, philosophy and economics (PPE). Hussey’s published writings in his later career show no particular depth of learning or fair in expression, and this seems to have been the pattern at school and then at university. Several school reports from Marlborough survive,

2 The Knoll, Aspley Heath, at http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/wsc/docs/knollschool. html, accessed 5 October 2016. 3 A.N. Wilson (2006) Betjeman (London: Hutchinson), pp. 37–40. 4 Diary entry for 19 December 1928, at MS Hussey 32. 5 G. Turner (1992) ‘“Aesthete, impresario and indomitable persuader”: Walter Hussey at St Matthew’s, Northampton and Chichester Cathedral,’ Studies in Church History, 28, 523–535, at 523. 6 Log book of photos taken in and before 1923, at MS Hussey 23. 7 Sketchbook at MS Hussey 52. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 19 showing a pupil of no particular note.8 At the end of Hussey’s second year at Oxford, his tutor, E.M. Hugh-Jones, gently suggested that the Honours School for PPE might be rather too diffcult for him. The impressions of Hussey’s philosophy tutor were not improving over time, and in economics he fared little better. As Hussey was considering ordination, Hugh-Jones suggested he might transfer to something less demanding without damaging his prospects; on his current course, a third-class degree was the most he could hope for, and even that was not certain.9 The advice was evidently not taken, and third-class honours in PPE were indeed what Hussey obtained, in 1930. If relatively little is recorded of his academic career, there are indica- tions of a burgeoning interest in music. One friend in Oxford was Ralph Downes, organ scholar of the college and later organist of the Brompton Oratory. Hussey’s papers include the third trombone part of Downes’ 13 O’Clock Music, autographed by the composer, which was evidently written for the Keble Plays of 1928, and played by the New Oxontrics dance band, of which Hussey was a member.10 Hussey was also a member of the Oxford Orchestral Society, playing works by Haydn, Weber and Schubert amongst others.11 An early favourite was Elgar, with whom Hussey initiated and then kept up a frequent if rather one-sided correspondence until Elgar’s death in 1934. Elgar seems to have arranged for Hussey to attend rehearsals in London, although the great man dealt briskly with Hussey’s attempts to guess the true identity of the famous theme of the ‘Enigma’ Variations: ‘No: Auld Lang syne will not do.’12 Sometime in the spring or early summer of 1931, during a spell as a schoolmaster before entering Cuddesdon College to train for ordination, Hussey also saw his frst opera at Covent Garden: Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.13 While at Cuddesdon he purchased the frst piece in his personal

8 School reports at MS Hussey 23. 9 E.M. Hugh-Jones to WH, 20 March 1929, at MS Hussey 24. 10 Manuscript at MS Hussey 311; a card announcing Downes’ marriage in 1929 is at MS Hussey 312; programme for the Keble Plays at MS Hussey 24. 11 Diary entry, 24 October 1928, at MS Hussey 32. 12 Elgar to WH, 24 January 1930, and 6 October 1931, both at MS Hussey 315. 13 W. Hussey (1985) Patron of Art. The revival of a great tradition among modern artists (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p. 14. 20 P. Webster art collection: a theatre design for a student production of Romeo and Juliet, acquired in February 1932.14 It was on the subject of Elgar that Hussey was frst published, in the Musical Times for 1931: a piece written around or soon after the time Hussey received his degree. Although immature and in places naive, not to say gushing in its adulation of Elgar, the article contains the seeds of an understanding of music that, once translated into Christian terms, would remain with him throughout his career. Music, Hussey thought, had a quality of ‘emotionalism’ that ‘corresponds with a quality present, in a greater or less degree of quantity and refnement, in the characters of human beings.’ One species of this was ‘emotion springing from reaction to a view of life or a philosophy’. For the young Hussey, Elgar struck the perfect balance between the ‘neurotic intimacy’ of Tchaikovsky, on the one hand, and an arid suppression of emotion that Hussey detected in Brahms, on the other. In the ‘Nimrod’ variation from the Enigma Variations, Hussey found ‘self-control and reserve, and yet was ever music charged with a more profound and deeper emotion?’ Despite much of what was said of the English and their ‘stolid and phlegmatic character, this emotional quality properly controlled is typical of a good many Englishmen.’15 Great music was a response to the deepest human emotions, appropriately refned and directed. There was but a short distance to travel from here to Hussey’s more mature view of the creative process, examined in its later Christianised form later in this chapter.

Ordination By April 1930, near the end of his time at Oxford, Hussey had been informally accepted into Cuddesdon College, near Oxford, to train for ordination.16 Practically no indication survives of the development of his vocation. Many years later, his trusted secretary at Chichester, Hilary Bryan-Brown, wondered how strong a vocation Hussey had felt in

14 D. Coke and N. Colyer (1990) The Fine Art Collections. Pallant House, Chichester (Chichester: Pallant House), p. 5. 15 W. Hussey (1931) ‘Emotionalism in the music of Elgar’, Musical Times 72, n.1057 (March 1st), pp. 211–212. 16 Eric Graham to WH, 1 April 1930, at MS Hussey 25. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 21 fact.17 Although it cannot be known with any certainty, it is possible that Hussey’s move to ordination was simply a matter of following the profession of both his father and his brother. Christopher Hussey was ordained in September 1931 after also studying at Cuddesdon. In 1930, Hussey was too young to enter training straight away and so, at the advice of Eric Graham, principal of the college, he spent a period of time working as a schoolmaster at Charleston in Sussex. Of this episode little trace remains, although (as will be seen in Chap. 3), Hussey was able to relate well to school-age boys, as choristers or as pupils. If Hussey was tempted by a life of teaching, he resisted the temptation, and began his studies at Cuddesdon in the summer of 1931.18 One key source of encouragement during his training seems to have been Thomas Banks Strong, bishop of Oxford. After having lived in a community of young men as dean of Christ Church Oxford for nearly two decades from 1901, Strong had returned from being bishop of Ripon to take up residence at Cuddesdon Palace, opposite the college, in 1925. One of Strong’s chief enthusiasms was the development of the ordinands. Eric Graham thought him ‘a genius at dealing with young men’, making a point of inviting every ordinand to dine alone with him at least twice; his attitude had ‘no hint of anything offcial [but only] sheer spontaneous friendliness’.19 With Hussey, the connection must surely have been aided by a common enthusiasm for music. Strong was an organist, pianist, minor composer and (like Hussey) a brass player, in Strong’s case, the French horn. His taste was eclectic, and his attitude to new music receptive. On hearing of Hussey’s appointment as curate of the church of St Mary Abbots in Kensington in 1932, Strong wrote: ‘of course, I have not known you long but we have got rather near together, and I have the utmost confdence in you’.20 The correspondence continued after Hussey left Cuddesdon, and amongst the few surviving works of theology that Hussey retained in his library was Strong’s Religion,

17 H. Bryan-Brown (2007) ‘Hussey at the Deanery’, in P. Foster (ed.) Chichester Deans. Continuity, commitment and change at Chichester Cathedral, 1902–2006 (Chichester: University of Chichester), p. 72. 18 Graham to WH, 1 April 1930, at MS Hussey 25. 19 H. Anson (1949) T.B. Strong. Bishop, musician, Dean, Vice-chancellor (London: SPCK), pp. 71–72, 115–125. 20 Strong to WH, 13 July 1932, at MS Hussey 434. 22 P. Webster

Philosophy and History (Oxford, 1923), autographed by its author in 1931.21 St Mary Abbots was another stop on Hussey’s tour of Gothic Revival buildings, designed by George Gilbert Scott and completed in 1872. Just to the west of Kensington Palace, it was an area of no small social signifcance, and Scott was commissioned to build on a scale ‘proportioned to the opulence and importance of this great Metropolitan parish.’22 St Mary’s was a church in which the children of the aristocracy were married, which may have both suited and further fostered Hussey’s taste for the company of the elite, as well as widening his range of contacts.23 Importantly, the Royal Albert Hall and the Victoria and Albert Museum were within a mile’s walk. A short bus ride east took him to the Royal Academy of Arts, and the galleries and art dealerships of Mayfair. It was also an area of London which Hussey knew already. As a student in 1928, he had heard the great Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin sing at the Royal Albert Hall, and afterwards viewed the London skyline from the roof of a fat of a friend very near the church: ‘although not very clear it is wonderful & quite captivating. I love London’, he wrote.24 Hussey recalled that during this time his tastes in art widened, as he fre- quented the Tate Gallery and the Bond Street Galleries, all within easy reach. It was also during this time that Hussey cemented an interest in the operas of Wagner. He had seen Tristan und Isolde at Covent Garden in 1931; in the company of the rural dean of Kensington, H.H. Lowe, he saw the same opera in 1936, with Kirsten Flagstad, also at Covent Garden.25 In between two spells at St Mary Abbots, Hussey spent a year (1935– 1936) as curate in charge of the church of St Paul, Vicarage Gate, a chapel of ease to St Mary Abbots. The church no longer exists, having been damaged by bombing during the war and not rebuilt. There were

21 Hussey’s copy was among those he gave to the library of Chichester Cathedral; it remains part of the library’s holdings. 22 (1973) The Survey of London. Volume 37: Northern Kensington (London: London County Council), as at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol37/pp25-41, accessed 1 February 2017. 23 Order of service for the wedding of the Hon. James Lindsay and the Hon. Bronwen Scott-Ellis, 1933, at MS Hussey 110. 24 Diary entry, 14 October 1928, at MS Hussey 32. 25 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 3, 14. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 23

Image 2.1 Hussey shortly after his ordination. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 65

offers of other opportunities during Hussey’s time in London, which suggest something of the potential he was thought to have (Image 2.1). Twice he was offered positions as chaplain to one of the bishops: work which gave an unparalleled insight into the workings of the higher eche- lons of the church, and which, in many men’s careers, was the prelude to occupying higher offce themselves. A.F. Winnington-Ingram, bishop of London, and like Hussey, an alumnus of both Marlborough College and Keble, invited Hussey to join his staff at Fulham Palace in late 1934, just as Hussey had set a course for St Paul’s.26 Hussey seems to have been reluctant to leave parish work, a decision which one of his advisors in a position to judge thought a sound one. Henry de Candole, later bishop of Knaresborough, had been on the teaching staff at Marlborough while

26 Winnington-Ingram to WH, 23 January 1935, at MS Hussey 91. 24 P. Webster

Hussey was a pupil, and then chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson. Writing as a parish priest in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he was glad that Hussey had opted to stay in the parishes: pastoral work was to be preferred every time.27 Two years later, a similar offer was to come from Nugent Hicks, bishop of Lincoln, which Hussey appears to have declined on much the same grounds, but also due to some unspecifed personal consideration.28 Hussey later recalled that, although he had been very happy as a parish priest, ‘I had always felt that the most desirable job in the Church of England would be to be Dean of an ancient and beautiful cathedral, preferably not too far from London.’29 In 1936, there hove into view a prospect that must have tested Hussey’s resolve rather more than being a bishop’s chaplain. C.C. Thicknesse, newly appointed dean of St Albans—just such an ancient building within very easy reach of the capital—sounded Hussey out about the prospect of coming to St Albans as subdean. Thicknesse was another Marlborough and Keble man, and also son of another of the clergy in Northampton, and had known John Rowden Hussey since childhood. Hussey thought that he should be very happy to take the position, but the scheme was derailed by concern amongst others at St Albans about Hussey’s age.30

Art and Theology in the Church of England Before 1943 Hussey’s early formation as priest and as lover of the arts also took place in a wider context. This study is not the place for an exhaustive survey of the state of the visual arts in the Church of England, but the actual state of affairs is of secondary importance when set alongside a powerful negative story that had taken hold amongst some modern artists and the critics that moved in the same circles. The artist Hans Feibusch, writing in 1947 but looking back over a career of thirty years, wrote of the ‘horrible, degraded things that commercial unscrupulousness has foisted

27 De Candole to WH, 29 December 1934, at MS Hussey 91. 28 B.F. Simpson (bishop of Kensington) to WH, 30 September 1936, at MS Hussey 93. 29 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 100. 30 Thicknesse to WH, 16 March 1936, at MS Hussey 92, et ff. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 25 on to [the Church]; of modern art she knows nothing.’31 For the critic Eric Newton, one of Hussey’s early supporters, it was both strange and tragic that Christianity, having ‘inspired so many of the most vital and surprising masterpieces of the past, should now be content with painting and sculpture, so effete, so emasculated.’32 Were there really no serious fgures working for the church in the 1930s who were both com- mercially scrupulous and not given to affected prettiness? The architect Ninian Comper was one, working in the tradition of Gothic Revival; the designer Martin Travers worked in a neo-Baroque style for many Anglican churches of the Anglo-Catholic wing. However, men such as these were often neglected in the telling of this particular story, which rested on a specifc reading of religious and artistic history. Part of that story was the medieval past. For Hans Feibusch, the Church in former ages was ‘art’s greatest patron; from her there fowed to the artist an unending stream of ecstasy, deepest emotion, vision, symbols and images, to which he answered by lavishing on her glorifcation all his creative power, all his inventiveness and all the beauty he could gather.’33 This relationship reached its apo- gee in the Baroque period, and subsequently broke down. At the end of Hussey’s career, Kenneth Clark, a considerable art historian as well as a patron, placed Hussey’s work in the same history of Christian patronage of the arts. Enlightened individual patrons had produced great works of art, from Aethelwold at Winchester Cathedral, to Pope Julius II and the Sistine Chapel, through to the support of the Earl of Shrewsbury for Pugin. ‘And then? Full stop.’ For Clark, Hussey was the only English churchman with the ‘courage and insight to maintain—I wish I could say revive—the great tradition of patronage by individual churchmen.’34 For the critic Edward Sackville-West, the causes of this breakdown were the rise of ‘Puritanism’, the Church’s loss of its grip on the aristocracy and the wars of religion. From then on, the Protestant church capitulated to a secular spirit, of ‘hard-heartedness and avarice disguised as

31 H. Feibusch (1946) Mural Painting (London: A. & C. Black), p. 90. 32 E. Newton (1945) ‘Art and the Church Today’, London Calling 283 (March) 11–12, at p. 11. 33 Feibusch, Mural Painting, p. 89. 34 K. Clark (1975) ‘Dean Walter Hussey. A tribute to his patronage of the arts’ in Hussey (ed.) Chichester 900 (Chichester: Chichester Cathedral), pp. 68–72. 26 P. Webster austerity….Religion, deprived of eyes and ears, went into a long doze’.35 Only the Oxford Movement had begun to repair the damage. Whatever their failings as history, and their differences on timing and precise causes, these various accounts were clear about the overarching narrative: the Church had once been a great patron of art, a position it had since lost, to the detriment of both the church and the artist. Despite this narrative of a philistine church and its neglect of the artist—a rhetorical device on the part of those outside it—there was, between the wars, signifcant thinking within the Church of England’s Catholic wing that provided Hussey with intellectual cover. Percy Dearmer is now best known for his work on the form of Anglo-Catholic worship and the highly infuential English Hymnal. However, Dearmer was also Professor of Ecclesiastical Art at King’s College London from 1919, and a prolifc writer on the subject.36 In 1924, Dearmer surveyed the development of Christian art, also seeking to correct a misreading of history. The misreading Dearmer detected was not quite that which Clark identifed, but their two accounts agreed on the result: ‘the general notion among pious folk in the nineteenth century was that art was rather wrong, while the poets and artists of Europe generally considered that religion was rather stupid.’37 There was much work to do in reac- quainting the church and the artist. Unlike critics and artists, Dearmer and others had also a theological reason to assert that this was to misread not only history but theology as well. There was, he thought, a growing rejection of ‘both the bleak indifference of our puritan tradition and the decadent hedonism which was a reaction against it…we are less tempted to regard the arts because of their delightfulness as a mere pastime; we are discovering that in them we touch the eternal world—that art is in fact religious. The object of art is not to give pleasure, as our fathers assumed, but to express the highest spiritual realities. Art is not only delightful: it is necessary.’38

35 E. Sackville-West (1947) ‘Art and the Christian Church’, Vogue (March), p. 114. 36 D. Gray (2000) Percy Dearmer. A parson’s pilgrimage (Norwich: Canterbury Press), pp. 128–129. 37 P. Dearmer (1924) ‘Christianity and Art’ in Dearmer (ed.) The Necessity of Art (London: SCM), p. 31. 38 P. Dearmer (1924) ‘Preface’ in Dearmer, The Necessity of Art, p. v. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 27

As we shall see, this very general sense of the religious nature of art was at the root of Hussey’s own view. It was, however, based on a more formalised theology of the relationship between art, the created world and the work of the artist. William Temple, occupant of Lambeth Palace as Hussey began his artistic project at Northampton, attempted more than once to articulate a Christian philosophy of art: ‘Art aims at revealing the value of the world [and] to reveal values by the creation of essential symbols’, wrote Temple in 1917. But there was a danger ever attendant on the artist: ‘In thus concentrating attention upon itself, [art] claims to be all-satisfying. It gathers all the elements of life within its embrace. Perfect Beauty is thus attained; but the work of art is become a Sacrament and the aesthetic experience is passing into religion.’39 A more commonplace version of this notion of the work of art as a sacrament, and the act of creating as a religious act, was to be found frequently among artists and churchmen alike. Clifford Musgrave, Director of the Brighton Libraries and Galleries, introduced an exhibition in a Brighton church in the following terms. The pictures were not of religious subjects, but:

they embody as fully as any purely ecclesiastical painting the moral principles which all true art expresses. There is the deeply religious sense of the poetry and intensity of human life and natural phenomena, the perception of truth and fearless integrity in giving expression to that particular vision, and a toleration of nothing less than perfection. These are the principles on which all true art must depend whatever its nature and purpose.40

The notion of the vocation of the artist was connected with a search for a renewed Christian theology of work, and the need to reverse a per- ceived alienation of the worker from his labour. Much thought had been given both before and during the Second World War to the place of the worker in industrial civilisation and how to make concrete the principle of ‘laborare est orare’.41 For George Bell, the engagement of artists

39 W. Temple (1917) Mens Creatrix (London: Macmillan), p. 127. 40 Draft description of ‘Pictures in Churches’ loan scheme: Lambeth Palace Library, Bell Papers, vol. 151, f. 13. 41 See, for example, the contributions of J.M. Heron and Philip Mairet to M.B. Reckitt, ed. (1945) Prospect for Christendom (London: Faber), 70–84, 114–126. Similar themes are latent in the discussions of William Temple’s conference at Malvern in 1941: W. 28 P. Webster in work for the church was part of a wider vision of the nature of the church community and its relationship with the society in which it was set. ‘Man’s life, man’s interests, man’s gifts, should be brought there for a special consecration.… And in the offering of a man’s gifts, his labour and his sacrifce, the art not only of the architect, but of the sculptor, the painter and the craftsman has each its peculiar signifcance.’42 Sir Eric Maclagan, speaking at Northampton at Hussey’s invitation, took as his text the words of the catechism on the duty to ‘learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me.’ It was thus for the artists to ‘devote themselves to their Art… all serving God, certainly not only (perhaps in some cases, not at all) in specifcally religious work.’43 In this scheme, the artist had as clear a vocation to serve as the priest. Neither was it the case that this thinking was accessible only in expensive academic books or specialist periodicals. From the late 1920s, the journal The Modern Churchman, representative of the more modernist theology, carried articles on theological aesthetics, as did its more Catholic rival Theology, which also reviewed exhibitions.44 Even from within the Evangelical constituency, historically amongst the least disposed towards the visual arts, the question was being asked: ‘ought we to have more of beauty in our churches?’45 An indication that the topic was becoming more generally debated was the publication in 1944 by the SCM Press of Art, religion and the common life, by the Quaker Horace Pointing, in a pocket pamphlet form priced at one shilling and sixpence.46 Increasing Roman Catholic interest in the subject is evident

Temple (ed.) (1941) Malvern 1941. The life of the church and the order of society (London: Longmans and Green), passim. 42 Bell, ‘The church and the artist’ The Studio 124, no. 594, (1942) 81–92, at 87, 90. 43 Sermon given on 26 May 1946, printed as Five Sermons by Laymen at MS Hussey 114. 44 L. Hunter (1926) ‘The arts in relation to the sacraments’ Modern Churchman 16, p. 68; T.S.R. Boase (1943), ‘Religion and art’ Theology 46, 241–248. 45 A.W. McClymont (1943) ‘The beautiful in the divine order’, Evangelical Quarterly 15, 279–291. 46 H.B. Pointing (1944) Art, religion and the common life (London: SCM). 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 29 from the attempt to found Modern Sacred Art, intended to be an ‘international annual review’ and edited and published in the UK.47 Of course, September 1939 saw the outbreak of war, and all these themes were overlaid with new and rather more pressing concerns, with the very real possibility of a German imposition of fascism on the British. As Peter Stansky and William Abrahams have pointed out, it was not inevitable that such times should produce an upsurge in artistic activity; the confict of 1914–1918 had not.48 However, both the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (J.M. Keynes’ predecessor to the Arts Council) and Kenneth Clark’s War Artists Advisory Committee were motivated by a practical concern that the arts should not be a casu- alty of the war.49 This was partly for the sake of the artists themselves, but also a statement about the importance of culture and the existential threat that Hitler posed. To preserve and foster the arts was, in itself, an act of resistance. It was not only English or British culture that was being fought for, but also ‘Christian civilisation’: the moral and cultural project common to all Europe which Hitler appeared to upend. The architect Charles Reilly regarded Hans Feibusch’s mural for St Wilfrid’s, Brighton in 1940 as a fower of the pre-war civilisation of Europe now under existential threat. Once a German, now an Englishman, Feibusch had now added something of permanent worth that went some way to offset the evils of the age.50 Not all British churchmen were entirely comfortable with some of the rhetoric of ‘Christian civilisation’, fearful of a repeat of the bellicos- ity that marked the early years of the 1914–1918 confict, and prefer- ring to emphasise instead the need for radical change at home.51 But for many, including George Bell, there was much to preserve and also an

47 J. Morris (ed.) (1938) Modern Sacred Art. An international annual review (London: Sands). 48 P. Stansky & W. Abrahams (1994) London’s Burning. Life, death and art in the Second World War (London: Constable), p. 2. 49 See the frst chapter of B. Foss (2007) War paint. Art, war, state and identity in Britain, 1939–1945 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press). 50 This typescript address was enclosed with a letter from Reilly to Bell, 24 June 1940, at Bell Papers vol. 150, ff. 248–249. 51 K. Robbins (1993) ‘Britain, 1940 and “Christian civilisation”’, in Robbins, History, religion and identity in modern Britain (London: Hambledon) pp. 195–213, at pp. 202–203. 30 P. Webster opportunity. The revival of the arts was part of the cure, for behind the actual war of 1939 there ‘lies the spiritual war. There is a totalitarian- ism of democracy as well as of dictatorship. The life of the spirit is no less gravely threatened by the mechanisation of culture which the former causes than by the brutal tyranny of the latter.’ Fundamentally, European civilisation had fallen out of communion with its source and the arts could help reunite them.52

Hussey’s Theology of Art Although Hussey had many opportunities—in sermons, in a cluster of printed articles in the 1940s, in broadcasts and in interviews with the press—he seldom expanded on the theological justifcation for his patronage of the arts. Perhaps to make room for the details of the commissions themselves, Hussey’s account in Patron of Art of why he should be doing what he did was minimal.53 Hussey preferred to allow others to speak for him once a piece of art was complete, and to take advice during its making. However, he left enough writing, across a long range of time and in various forms, from which his theology of the arts may be reconstructed. ‘Of course’, wrote Hussey, in concluding Patron of Art, ‘the commissioning of works of art, with which this book has been solely concerned, formed only a small part of my work, but I believe that it is an important part and one that has a wide infuence’.54 In the writing of this book the present author reached a rather different conclusion: that Hussey’s record suggests that the arts occupied the commanding heights in his thinking and action, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Trevor Beeson, himself dean of Winchester, and previously canon of Westminster, thought that Hussey had been emptied out of the Anglo- Catholicism in which he had been raised, to leave behind only a liberal Christian Platonism, in which ‘art and music, rather than the redemp- tive message of the gospel, now nourished his soul’. For Beeson, this process was complete by the time Hussey reached Chichester in 1955.55

52 G. Bell (1942) ‘The church and the artist’, The Studio 124, n. 594, 90. 53 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 3. 54 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 146. 55 T. Beeson (2004) The Deans (London: SCM Press), p. 187. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 31

Tom Devonshire Jones made the same point, but more sympathetically; Hussey’s enjoyment of the arts was ‘more than a recreation [but something that] amounted to a whole outlook on culture, faith, home and everyday life.’56 Beeson’s point may stand insofar as Hussey may well have drawn most inspiration from the arts; the sources do not survive with which to determine the state of his personal devotional life. There is, however, enough theology from Hussey’s pen to suggest that, far from being an aberration as Beeson suggests, Hussey’s thought was in close alignment with much of those Anglican Catholic writers dealt with above. It also remained consistent throughout his career. Invited in 1949 to write for The Studio, an art periodical, Hussey argued that a piece of religious art had two purposes: ‘it should adorn God’s House with as worthy an offering of man’s creative spirit as can be managed, and it should convey to those who see it some aspect of the Christian truth.’57 Speaking to a Christian audience in Chichester shortly before he retired in 1977, he described the second of these two purposes in essentially the same terms: the aim of the artist was ‘to see clearly, to understand, to contemplate, and to express his experience with honesty.’ The artist ‘may, by forcing us to share his vision, lead us to the spiritual reality that lies behind the sounds and sights that we perceive with our senses.’58 As well as conveying truth, for Hussey, the work itself was an offering, as was the effort of the artist in making it. The artist may well enjoy the act of making, and at some level feel compelled to do it, but ‘whether he is entirely conscious of it or not, [he does it] because it is an act of worship which he must make.’ Hussey was fond of quoting Benjamin Britten’s comment to him that ‘ultimately all one’s music must be written to the glory of God’. Here, Hussey’s thinking shared the pervasive sense that the act of making was in itself religious in some way. Not only was the act of making of spiritual importance for the artist personally, it symbolised important things to the Christian community for which he or

56 T. Devonshire Jones (2007) ‘The legacy: the public fgure’ in P. Foster (ed.) Chichester Deans. Continuity, Commitment and Change at Chichester Cathedral, 1902–2006 (Chichester: University of Chichester), pp. 63–71, at p. 66. 57 W. Hussey (1949) ‘A churchman discusses art in the Church’, The Studio 138, pp. 80–81, 95. 58 W. Hussey (1978) ‘The arts and the Church’, English Church Music, pp. 7–10. The address was given to the Diocesan Synod in March 1977. 32 P. Webster she worked. ‘Art of high standard can and should be offered by mankind and in the offering symbolize all that should be offered by mankind.’ Every Christian should be offering their whole endeavour to God, in whichever occupation, and the artist’s work could be ‘a symbol of man’s life focussed in an act of worship in church’.59 Although it is unclear how familiar he was with their work, Hussey had also adopted the prevailing view amongst artists and critics of the recent history of Christian art. In 1949, he thought, the typical piece of work in an English church was ‘either a weak and sentimental essay in the most over-ripe Raffaelesque tradition, or occasionally a self-conscious straining after a modernesque style, while rarely does it suggest its subject with any force or vitality’. Though devotionally useful this work might be, it could not be the standard, and there was a broader cultural and historical problem with which to contend. In earlier ages, with a strong tradition of Christian art in a Christian culture, even a second-rate artist would produce adequate work, but now this unconscious refection of the tradition could not be relied upon. ‘When the tradition is largely lost and civilization is in a state of transition, it is among the fnest and most profound artists that the Church should seek help’.60 There were wider reasons for engaging with artists working in contemporary styles. The art of the past was to be studied constantly, and from it could inspiration and enrichment of worship be drawn. But the Church in every age needed the artist ‘to set forth her truth [and] to give the fruit of their contemporary meditation on those truths.’ There could be no guarantee that the result would be great art—only time could prove that—but ‘the art of today cannot imitate the great art of the past…the more it tries to imitate, the less will it show real understanding’. The contemporary artist ‘has lost the religious habit in which many of the earlier generations grew up…he will not get back to it by himself, unasked and unsought. The Church must go after him’.61 That pursuit would involve ‘patience and sympathy, tact and persever- ance’.62 What was Hussey’s view of the relationship between patron and artist? As the next two chapters will show, his early ventures were marked

59 Hussey, ‘The arts and the Church’, pp. 7–8. 60 Hussey, ‘A churchman discusses’, p. 80. 61 Hussey, ‘The arts and the Church’, pp. 8–9. 62 Hussey, ‘The arts and the Church’, p. 9. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 33 by a mixture of daring—a simple inability to know his place as a provincial parish priest—and a certain naivety as to the ways in which artists and composers were accustomed to working. In retirement, Hussey wrote on the subject of patronage, but this view was, in fact, fairly well formed in Hussey’s mind by 1947. Hussey was fond of recalling a meal in London, after one of the early performances of Britten’s opera Peter Grimes in June 1945. Around the table were Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland (at the time working on his Crucifxion for Northampton) and the critic Eric Newton and his wife: patron, artist and critic all together. Sutherland remarked that of the three, the patron was the key, because without him, no project would begin.63 This led Hussey to the thought that ‘the artist needs to feel that he has a role in society and is wanted.’64 A rather obvious point, perhaps, but (as we shall see) Hussey’s approach to patronage was a highly personal one, based very often on a friendship with those he commissioned. By 1945, Hussey was, in fact, already working in just this way; Sutherland’s words seem to have acted as a confrmation. ‘Very often’, Hussey recalled, ‘a commission, if [the artist] feels it is for something he could and would like to do, provides a challenge. The requirements and limitations within which he must work offer a stimulus rather than a restriction to his creative ability.’65 As we shall see, this was indeed the case, in Britten’s response to the curiosity that was Christopher Smart’s text, or Graham Sutherland’s treatment of the Crucifxion. Here visible is the infuence of Hans Feibusch, whose book Mural Painting was published in 1946 and which Hussey knew. ‘The artist on his side, it will be found, is always glad to have the collaboration of the patron’, wrote Feibusch. ‘He does not want to be offered a vacuum to fll as he pleases, he likes to be given the material; but he must be permitted to use it in his own way.’66 Chapter 4 will show Hussey using Feibusch’s work as an authority.

63 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 53. 64 Hussey, ‘Patronage’, the foreword to the catalogue for the exhibition ‘The Walter Hussey Art Collection’, Northampton Art Gallery, 1978, at Pallant House Gallery Archives, Dean Walter Hussey fle. 65 Hussey, ‘Patronage’. 66 Feibusch, Mural Painting, p. 92. 34 P. Webster

What was required of the patron, Hussey asked? ‘He must feel passionately that art is important. He must be willing to seek the best advice—always most readily given, in my experience.’67 The whole of this book will show that Hussey was certainly passionate about the importance of the arts. Hussey was also an assiduous seeker of advice, and that advice seems to have been very readily given as artists and critics alike recognised that they had on their hands a highly unusual clergyman acting at a propitious time. Hussey repeatedly used the advice of the expert as a lever with which to move those within his churches who had to be moved in order to make a scheme a reality. This was partly due to his own reticence in developing a theology of art of his own: others were simply better at saying what needed to be said. Hussey’s deference to experts must be seen alongside his fascination with the establishment, which was formed early. His early diaries note in detail early brushes with the aristocracy as they took tea with John Rowden Hussey in the vicarage at Northampton, or the occasion on which he sat directly behind Winston Churchill at an Oxford Union debate.68 His autograph book, begun as a schoolboy, contains autographs from prime ministers, members of the aristocracy, numerous bishops and archbishops, as well as what was at this stage a small number of artistic fgures: George Bernard Shaw, Richard Strauss, Gustav Holst and John Masefeld among them.69 One reviewer of Patron of Art noted the inclusion of ‘a great many letters from notable people, many of them saying what a splendid fellow Walter Hussey is. Their reproduction is probably the only lapse of taste in his career.’70 What else did the patron owe the artist, in Hussey’s view? ‘He must try to understand the artist’s point of view, always expressing his thought honestly, but at the same time willing to learn and to trust the artist.’71 As we shall see, Hussey was by and large successful in this although not always, as in the case of Lennox Berkeley (see Chap. 4). Here again, he was perhaps infuenced by Hans Feibusch. Contemporary artists should

67 Hussey, ‘Patronage’. 68 Diary entries of 6 October 1928 and 1 March 1928, at MS Hussey 32. 69 MS Hussey 53. 70 Nicholas Bagnall review of Patron of Art in the Sunday Telegraph, 24 March 1985: cutting at MS Hussey 281. 71 Hussey, ‘Patronage’. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 35 not even attempt religious work, Feibusch thought, ‘unless you feel that you move naturally and gladly in the world out of which they come’. Once certain of this, however, the artist should ‘carry it out as vigorously as you can and without further compromise’. It was up to the church to give the artist the freedom to act on that conviction.72 Was it necessary that the artist himself be a Christian believer? (Hussey’s commissionees were all male). The logical conclusion of Hussey’s view of the work of art itself—that the making of art was intrinsically religious, an offering to God and a participation in His creative work—suggested not. Any suggestion of a ‘heresy hunt’ would be counter-productive. What was required from the artist was not belief, but ‘real sympathy with the work [and] an ability and willingness to understand from the inside.’73 As we shall see, not all those who saw the results thought them a complete success.

The Church of England as Patron in the 1930s As we have seen, some in the Church of England had been developing a renewed theology of the arts in the 1920s. Was this intellectual backing for Hussey’s idea accompanied with practical examples to follow? In this, the story is different for each of the arts. Martin Thomas has argued that the inter-war period saw English church music composition moving in a more conservative direction: stylistically derivative and excessively utili- tarian.74 Despite this, new church music was being written by established composers for use in the Church, some (although by no means all) of it music of distinction and originality, from fgures such as Gustav Holst and Vaughan Williams, and by lesser fgures such as Edward Bairstow, W. H. Harris and Harold Darke. Despite some signs of decline, there were still a multitude of choral festivals at national and local level. In the School of English Church Music (founded in 1928), there was a body charged with the maintenance and fostering of the tradition. English Church Music, the SECM’s journal from 1931, provided a channel in

72 Feibusch, Mural Painting, p. 91. 73 Hussey, ‘A churchman discusses’, p. 95. 74 M. Thomas (2015) English cathedral music and liturgy in the twentieth century (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 21–63. 36 P. Webster which the genre could be documented and discussed, and new church music was also taken seriously in the musical press more widely.75 A common view amongst the group of artists and critics in sympathy with Hussey’s project was that religious art was in a sorry state in the late 1930s. It was certainly in a rather weaker position than was the case for music. Artists were not accustomed to working for the church in the way that many contemporary composers were, but churches did routinely acquire new furnishings and decoration. Hussey also had some examples of church commissioning of work from prominent artists to fre his imagination, although it is not clear how far he knew them. One was the fourteen carved panels of the Stations of the Cross by Eric Gill, executed between 1913 and 1918 for the chief Roman Catholic church in the land, Westminster Cathedral.76 George Bell, after moving from Canterbury to be bishop of Chichester in 1929, had commissioned a series of works of art in new churches between 1938 and 1941: E.W. Tristram in Eastbourne; Hans Feibusch in Brighton; Augustus Lunn in Hove. In 1941, he had also intervened on the side of the artist in a dispute over the mural paintings by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell in the country church of Berwick.77 In 1943, Hussey had a theological framework in which to work, and some early examples from which to learn.

A Partial Vision Hussey occupies a uniquely important place in the recent history of music and visual art made for the Church of England. However, there is at least one more art form in which great hopes were invested by Anglicans in this period: religious drama. As with the visual arts, the medieval church had been a major player in public dramatic performance, in the shape of the mystery plays. As with the visual arts, the Reformation had cut through this traditional connection, and all but banished dramatic performance from within the Church. As with the visual arts, there were those in the Church of England who grasped this

75 On the existence of a church music ‘Establishment’, see I. Jones and P. Webster (2006) ‘Anglican “Establishment” reactions to “pop” church music in England, 1956– c.1990’, Studies in Church History 42, pp. 429–441. 76 F. MacCarthy (1989) Eric Gill (London: Faber), pp. 124–126. 77 R.C.D. Jasper (1967) George Bell. Bishop of Chichester (London: OUP), p. 129; F. Spalding (1999) Duncan Grant (London: Chatto and Windus), pp. 380–385. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 37 story of an older tradition lost, and saw both an opportunity and a need to recreate that connection. George Bell’s frst moves in artistic patronage as Dean of Canterbury were new religious plays commissioned for the cathedral, beginning with The Coming of Christ by John Masefeld, frst performed in 1928.78 ‘On that day’, thought Bell, ‘history was made…the Poet and the Artist together re-entered the Church.’79 The enterprise that Bell began at Canterbury was then to produce plays from Charles Williams, Christopher Fry, Dorothy L. Sayers and (most famously) T.S. Eliot: his Murder in the Cathedral (1935).80 The period after 1945 saw a remarkable fowering of local dramatic activity in churches, fostered by the Religious Drama Society.81 Bell, as Hussey’s bishop, stayed in close touch with this effort. Given all this, it would have been a natural companion piece to Hussey’s interest in music and the visual arts to have tried similarly to foster the religious drama. Hussey was not uninterested in the theatre; quite the reverse. The diaries of his youth recount trips to London theatres with his father, along with regular encounters with visiting players at the New Theatre in Northampton as John Rowden invited them to tea. ‘The gay geni- ality of this set quite dazzles me’, he wrote at the age of nineteen, ‘& for about a day makes me think seriously of some work connected with such a life (Company Manager, or the like.’)82 Yet, despite having the opportunity and (in Chichester) the resources, Hussey seems not to have engaged with religious drama to anything like the same extent. At Northampton, there were offers of help. In 1949, Hussey was approached by Alexander Brent-Smith about a possible performance of a play on St Paul with musical interludes.83 While now not remembered as a particularly signifcant composer, Brent-Smith was no ingenue, having

78 P. Webster (2012) ‘George Bell, John Masefeld and The Coming of Christ: context and signifcance’ in A. Chandler (ed.) The Church and Humanity. The life and work of George Bell, 1883–1958 (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 47–57. 79 Webster ‘George Bell, John Masefeld and The Coming of Christ’, p. 47. 80 K. Pickering (1985) Drama in the cathedral. The Canterbury Festival plays 1928–1948 (Worthing: Churchman). 81 Pickering, Drama in the Cathedral, passim. 82 Diary entries of 2 January 1929 and 30 September 1928, at MS Hussey 32. 83 Alexander Brent-Smith to WH, 10 November 1949, at MS Hussey 343. 38 P. Webster been director of music at Lancing College in Sussex as well as a prolifc author.84 However, the idea seems to have progressed no further. A little later, Hussey was put in touch with Hugh Ross Williamson, the priest and dramatist, but appears not to have pursued any collaboration.85 A more signifcant fgure altogether was Ronald Duncan, who had been librettist to Benjamin Britten, most notably for the opera The Rape of Lucretia (1946).86 Duncan’s play Our Lady’s Tumbler had been written for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and performed at Salisbury Cathedral. The music was by Arthur Oldham, another Britten connection, with designs by Cecil Beaton.87 In this case, Hussey evidently expressed some interest in a performance at Northampton with the original cast, such that Duncan sent him a copy of the play, but this too was to come to nothing. Eric Crozier, another major fgure in the Britten circle, had in 1945 sent Hussey an unspecifed play by the French Catholic playwright Henri Ghéon. Hussey evidently liked the play, but not suffciently to pursue a performance at Northampton.88 There was, however, one modern writer of religious plays that Hussey did attempt to commission. Christopher Fry was, in 1953, at the height of his popularity, with the success in the West End of plays including The Lady’s Not for Burning and Venus Observed. Fry’s vision had been a religious one from the frst: a revival of religious verse drama, which owed much to T.S. Eliot. George Bell had encouraged Fry as a young playwright living in Sussex in the 1930s. It was through Bell that Fry had met Martin Browne, animating force of the Religious Drama Society, which was to commission his A Sleep of Prisoners (1951).89

84 Maggie Humphreys and Robert Evans (1997) Dictionary of Composers for the Church in Great Britain and Ireland (London: Mansell), p. 41. 85 Sylvia Coleridge to WH, 1 January 1952, at MS Hussey 354. 86 H. Carpenter (1992) Benjamin Britten. A biography (London: Faber), pp. 233, 242. Although by 1950 Duncan had fallen out of favour with Britten, the composer still wrote in relation to the collaboration with Oldham: Britten to Duncan, 3 February 1950, in D. Mitchell, P. Reed and M. Cooke, eds. (2004) Letters from a Life. Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten: volume 3, 1946–1951 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), pp. 577–578. 87 Duncan to WH, 13 December 1950, and undated, both at MS Hussey 313. 88 Crozier to WH, 23 April 1945, at MS Hussey 403. 89 Jasper, Bell, p. 126. On Fry’s play Thor, With Angels, written for Canterbury Cathedral, see Kenneth W. Pickering (1985) Drama in the Cathedral. The Canterbury Festival Plays, 1928–1948 (Worthing: Churchman), pp. 288–300. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 39

Once Hussey had moved to Chichester, he and Fry were to become very well acquainted, as Fry moved to the nearby village of East Dean. Fry was one of the contributors to the Chichester 900 volume of essays for the cathedral’s ninth centenary, and was also to give a tribute to Hussey’s work at the latter’s retirement dinner in Chichester in 1977.90 However, it was in 1953, when Hussey was still at Northampton that he approached Fry to write a play for St Matthew’s. Fry expressed his longstanding admiration for Hussey’s work, and hoped to write for Northampton at a later date.91 However, Fry never did return to the idea, and Hussey did not press it again. When set against the tenacity with which Hussey pursued those he most wanted to commission, the evidence of these several abortive contacts suggests strongly that, although by the early 1950s, Hussey had noted the growing interest in religious drama, it was not a central part of his vision. Perhaps the key to understanding this apparent contradic- tion is to be found in Hussey’s own art collection, which contains a small group of theatre designs. One of these was Hussey’s frst purchase, of a costume design for Romeo from a 1932 Oxford University Dramatic Society production of Romeo and Juliet.92 The other three are older still, being designs by the Russians Leon Bakst (d.1924) and Aleksandr Benua (d.1960), both associated with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Among Hussey’s papers is a small watercolour, possibly by Hussey himself, of the three kings of the Christmas narrative, on which are added notes on the fabrics out of which their costumes might be made, presumably for a nativity play.93 It would seem that Hussey was interested in the theatre for how it looked, rather than for the words it used and the stories it had to tell. His was a visual and a musical imagination; and where it was verbal, the commissions were of poetry for recitation, not for dramatic performance. George Bell encouraged the arts as an outgrowth of his theology, and as such, his vision encompassed all the arts. In contrast, Hussey was led by his aesthetic sense, and only secondarily attempted to add theological scaffolding around his work. As such, the emerging revival in religious drama is missing from his patronage because it simply

90 Fry to the Mayor of Chichester, 29 June 1977, at MS Hussey 108. 91 Fry to WH, 27 January 1953, at MS Hussey 321. 92 Coke and Colyer, The Fine Art Collections, p. 5. 93 The painting is at MS Hussey 52. 40 P. Webster did not excite him in the same way as did contemporary music and visual art. Another of the religious arts in which Hussey had limited interest was architecture.94 Granted, by the time Hussey retired, the Church of England was more likely to be decommissioning redundant churches than building new ones. However, there were signifcant new buildings in modern styles during Hussey’s period, such as those by N.F Cachemaille-Day in the diocese of Manchester in the 1930s, or the crop of new Roman Catholic buildings between the mid-1950s and the 1970s.95 Even if these examples were somewhat outside Hussey’s usual circles of contacts, there were Anglicans closer to him to whom architecture was a concern. George Bell had invited Cachemaille-Day to a conference on the ‘Church and the Artist’ at Chichester in 1944, along with Edward Maufe, architect of the new Guildford Cathedral and the Bishop Hannington Memorial Church in Hove (1938–1939), within Bell’s diocese.96 Although Maufe’s Guildford was scarcely in a modernist style to which much objection could be taken, Basil Spence’s rather more challenging Coventry Cathedral brought the question of the legitimate architectural style for a church building to the forefront of debate. This debate broadened in the 1960s to take in the most fundamental questions of the purpose of a building made for worship.97 As an incumbent of existing buildings at Northampton and Chichester, clearly Hussey was not in a position to commission architects as he could artists and composers, beyond the more routine work of maintenance that was required. Hussey seems to have approached Basil Spence about the rebuilding of the church hall in 1955, at what turned

94 A point made by A. Doig (1996) ‘Architecture and performance: Dean Walter Hussey and the arts’ Theology 99: 787, 16–21. 95 M. Bullen (1997) ‘Cachemaille-Day’s Manchester Churches’ in Chris Ford, Michael Powell & Terry Wyke (eds.) The Church in Cottonopolis. Essays to mark the 150th anniversary of the Diocese of Manchester (Manchester: Lancs & Cheshire Antiq. Soc.), pp. 144–174; R. Proctor (2014) Building the Modern Church. Roman Catholic church architecture in Britain, 1955 to 1975 (Farnham: Ashgate). 96 Cachemaille-Day to George Bell, 17 November 1944, at LPL Bell Papers, vol. 151, f. 266; Jasper, George Bell, p. 130. 97 See, for instance, the essays in G. Cope, ed. (1962) Making the building serve the liturgy (London: Mowbray), and P. Hammond, ed. (1962) Towards a church architecture (London: Architectural Press). 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 41 out to be only weeks before his appointment to Chichester.98 Shortly after, it was to Spence that Hussey turned for help with the internal masonry at Chichester (which is detailed in Chap. 5). That said, despite the very close theological parallels between contemporary debates about the visual arts and those on architecture, Hussey seems to have engaged little with them. His voluminous collections of cuttings from newspapers and other periodicals contain little on architecture, and he seems rarely to have made the kind of pilgrimage to a new church as he would habitually do to a gallery, theatre or concert hall. His interest in Coventry seems to have been largely confned to the artworks within the building, rather than with the building itself, being kept in touch by Graham Sutherland with the progress of his massive tapestry.99 Whether due to lack of opportunity, or a simple lack of interest, modern church architecture was as much a lacuna in Hussey’s thinking as was religious drama. Within Hussey’s interest in the visual arts, there were also some striking blind spots. Viewed in retrospect, one of the most signifcant fgures in religious art in the period was Stanley Spencer, but with only the slightest connection with places of worship. The remarkable Sandham Memorial chapel at Burghclere must be unique among churches in the order in which it was conceived, being a building commissioned to house the art, rather than the other way around. Spencer’s patrons, John Louis and Mary Behrend, were so taken with sketches they saw in 1923 that they committed to build a chapel to house them. Although it was consecrated for Anglican use, it remained always a private family chapel, and was only ever used occasionally for public worship.100 Spencer was born in 1891, but not until the 1950s was he in consideration for a major ecclesiastical commission, for Llandaff Cathedral.101 (The commission went to Jacob Epstein.)

98 Basil Spence to WH, 21 January 1955, at MS Hussey 433. Nothing came of the scheme, until it was revived in 1959 with a different architect. Harrison, St Matthew’s, p. 125. 99 See many of the letters at MS Hussey 345. 100 A. Bradley (2014) ‘The reluctant Maecenases: John Louis and Mary Behrend’ in A. Bradley and H. Watson (eds.) Stanley Spencer. Heaven in a hell of war (Chichester: Pallant House Gallery), pp. 22–23. 101 M. Collis (1962) Stanley Spencer. A biography (London: Harvill), p. 233. 42 P. Webster

Why the churches did not engage more with Spencer is a matter for conjecture. Certainly, Spencer’s is an idiosyncratic vision, of which some may have been wary. Episodes such as the abortive commission for the chapel of Campion Hall in Oxford may not have helped; Spencer was reported to have declared to the Jesuit Martin D’Arcy that ‘in my painting I owe nothing to God and everything to the Devil.’102 Hussey’s bequest of books to Pallant House contained a single item on Spencer, the 1947 volume by Eric Newton in the Penguin Modern Painters series; if Hussey ever saw Spencer’s work exhibited, he did not keep a catalogue. There was one moment of contact: Hussey invited Spencer to give a talk at Chichester in 1956, which Spencer declined.103 For Hussey, it may have been that Spencer was almost a generation older than those he commissioned in the 1940s. Perhaps the key was in the different circles in which the two moved. Mary Behrend was associated with Benjamin Britten as well as Spencer, and wrote twice to congratulate Hussey, one patron to another, for the Rubbra and Sutherland commissions.104 But Hussey respected the opinion of Kenneth Clark a great deal (on which see Chap. 5), and Clark seems to have had little time for Spencer. George Behrend, Mary’s son, was of the opinion that Clark ‘disliked Spencer and everyone to do with him’.105 Although Behrend was an unreliable witness, it nonetheless seems unlikely that Clark would have advised Hussey to look to Spencer. Newton, another of Hussey’s early advisers, thought highly of Spencer, but if Newton said as much to Hussey, the advice was not taken.106 The other major gap in Hussey’s career was in relation to the circle associated with Eric Gill. Works such as the Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral had made Gill one of the most prominent religious artists of the inter-war period and, although Gill himself had died in 1940, Hussey could have called upon a number of friends, associates and former apprentices. One such was David Jones, painter, poet and (like Gill) a convinced Roman Catholic. Although there were two works

102 Collis, Stanley Spencer, p. 158. 103 Spencer to WH, 14 November 1956, at MS Hussey 434. 104 Mary Behrend to WH, 24 September 1944, at MS Hussey 342; Mary Behrend to WH, 13 November 1946, at MS Hussey 346. 105 Bradley, ‘John Louis and Mary Behrend’, p. 20. 106 For Newton’s view of Spencer, see E. Newton and W. Neil (1966) The Christian Faith in Art (London: Thames & Hudson), pp. 275–279. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 43 by Jones in Hussey’s private collection at his death, he seems to have engaged little with Jones’ work for possible commissioning.107 The single commission with a Gill association was from Denis Tegetmeier, Gill’s son-in-law, who had been a member of the community at Ditchling in Sussex, and married Petra Gill after she had broken off an engagement to David Jones. In 1949, Tegetmeier designed the inscription over the place where the ashes of Hussey’s parents lay in the Lady Chapel of St Matthew’s.108 After reaching Chichester, Hussey seems to have become well acquainted with John Skelton, Gill’s nephew and (briefy) his apprentice, who was based in Burgess Hill, some forty miles east of Chichester. Skelton contributed a simple wooden cross to the refurbished Sailors’ Chapel in the cathedral in 1956, and also an essay on Gill’s association with Chichester to the Chichester 900 collection.109 The connection between the two seems to have been warm; Skelton’s retirement gift to Hussey, a mark of their artistic understanding, was a portrait of David Jones.110 However, Skelton’s major commission for Chichester, the font, was a project of Robert Holtby, Hussey’s successor. Why Hussey seems not to have engaged with the Gill circle as commissionees must remain a matter of speculation. It would have been curious if Hussey should have been wary of the Roman Catholicism with which Gill and Jones were both publicly associated, since he was so accommodating of other artists without any Christian allegiance at all. It may simply have been a matter of taste.

107 The two works were ‘Puma’ (1930), and ‘Laetare – Sunday Thrush’ (1948). Pallant House Gallery, The Fine Art Collections, p. 55. 108 Tegetmeier to WH, 7 February 1947, at MS Hussey 349. 109 M. Hobbs (1994) Chichester Cathedral. An historical survey (Chichester: Phillimore) pp. 269–270; Skelton (1975) ‘Eric Gill in Chichester’ in W. Hussey (ed.) Chichester 900 (Chichester: Chichester Cathedral), pp. 48–52. 110 Skelton to WH, 25 July 1977, at MS Hussey 108. 44 P. Webster

Hussey’s Character As we saw earlier in this chapter, Tom Devonshire Jones noted the overarching signifcance of the arts in Hussey’s view of the world. Hussey’s life was characterised by a search for aesthetic perfection, and ‘his life style’s solitariness and incompleteness were wrapped up in this search’.111 Was Hussey a solitary man, as Devonshire Jones suggested? Hussey himself appears in his papers often only obliquely; a product of his habit of retaining only those letters he received, and not copies of those he sent. Glimpses of his character are therefore relatively few, and often provided by others. Lancelot Mason, a clerical colleague at Chichester, wrote of Hussey as a brilliant mimic and raconteur, a retailer of tales of opera singers and conductors, a ‘delightful colleague and companion’.112 His secretary during the later years at Chichester, Hilary Bryan-Brown, similarly remembered one who was more than ready to laugh at the odder aspects of life in a cathedral city, and to be distracted from the dic- tation of letters in order to recall stories of people he had met and amus- ing situations in which he had found himself. At Chichester, he seems to have been ready to talk to anyone from around the cathedral community about some personal diffculty, and was ready both to give advice and to take up a cause with great tenacity.113 Devonshire Jones also noted a suavity that allowed him to meet Kenneth Clark on something like equal terms.114 The correspondence with the artists and musicians with whom he was comfortable shows many signs of genuine affection, including from their spouses. Bryan-Brown recorded diffculties as well as strengths. One was Hussey’s shyness; although he could be charming with those he knew, there was considerable effort required in the meeting of new people (the phrase is ‘private agonies’). A close friend in the later years at Chichester and in retirement described him as both diffdent and shy, but charming once one was known. The same friend remembered Hussey as

111 T. Devonshire Jones (2007) ‘The legacy: the public fgure’ in P. Foster (ed.) Chichester Deans. Continuity, Commitment and Change at Chichester Cathedral, 1902–2006 (Chichester: University of Chichester), pp. 63–71, at p. 66. 112 L. Mason (2007) ‘Walter Hussey’ in P. Foster (ed.), Chichester Deans, pp. 143–144. 113 Bryan-Brown, ‘Hussey at the Deanery’, pp. 72–77; interview with James Simpson-Manser. 114 Devonshire Jones, ‘The legacy’, p. 68. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 45 exceptionally determined once set on a course of action, and irascible when he was frustrated.115 This manifested itself both in private and in public, such as if an unsuspecting pedestrian should obstruct the way as Bryan-Brown drove the Dean to the railway station in haste to catch a train to London.116 As the introduction made clear, this is not a work of biography proper, but a study of a professional life examined in its longitude: a quite different thing. There is, however, a further aspect of the story, which is nowhere explicit in the papers, but may be plainly read off from them: Hussey’s own sexuality. In recent years, sexuality has assumed such a prominent role in the projection of personal identity that not to engage with it in Hussey’s case would now seem as in some way an abdication of responsibility. This is perhaps particularly the case given the prominence that matters of sexuality have since assumed in public discussion of the Anglican church. Hussey’s own homosexuality presents the historian with a diffculty, in that the documentary evidence for it is thin, although those who remember him are in no doubt of it. And one might of course expect this, since most of Hussey’s life was lived in a sexual monoculture, at least in the public sphere. In 1955, when Hussey arrived in Chichester, homosexual practice was contrary to the moral teaching of the church. If there were some voices within the churches who argued for a greater understanding of the plight of the homosexual man, it was yet couched in terms of help, care, indeed treatment and cure. And of course, until the passing of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, when Hussey was nearing 60, to be an active gay man was to risk prosecution and prison. In this context, it is hardly surprising that the Hussey Papers contain little direct evidence of Hussey’s sexual identity. That said, Hussey’s diaries as a young man at Oxford and Cuddesdon are those of a young man quite clear in his own identity, but unsure how best to reconcile it with his vocation to the priesthood.117 The diaries are patchy in their coverage, but describe in detail an intense infatuation with a near contemporary in Oxford, by whom the affection was

115 Interview with James Simpson-Manser. 116 Bryan-Brown, ‘Hussey at the Deanery’, pp. 72, 74. 117 See, for instance, the entry for 21 November 1931, at MS Hussey 33. 46 P. Webster not returned, and who died tragically not long afterwards.118 There is in the diaries a sense in which Hussey’s turn towards ordination was also a renunciation of this particular side of him: a choosing of the certain- ties of Christ over the agonies of unrequited love. In later years, as was typical, the question of why Hussey never married was spoken of (insofar as it was mentioned at all) with the curious mixture of coyness and jocu- larity which surrounded such open secrets. George Bell made enquiries about the subject amongst clergy in Northampton whilst considering appointing Hussey as dean, and the answer from John Grimes, archdeacon of Northampton, was typical. Hussey had not avoided marriage because he disliked women; the real reason, Grimes thought, was that, since Hussey had lived very near to his parents, he simply did not feel the need. When Grimes teased him about it, Hussey had always replied that he kept an open mind on the matter.119 Whether this was naivety or reticence on Grimes’ part, it fts the pattern of other such exchanges. That Hussey was indeed homosexual comes into clearer view after 1967. Hilary Bryan-Brown recorded that he would habitually travel to London from Chichester at least once a week, mostly to visit exhibitions and buy and sell pieces for his own collection, but also hear a concert or see a play, and see his friends.120 The small body of personal correspondence from the last years in Chichester and his early retirement in London suggests that many of those friends in London were gay men. Hussey had helped in several ways—lent money, offered to stand as guarantor—and in turn, his correspondents were frank about the new and unfamiliar task of building gay relationships in the open: a frankness that it would be hard to imagine with a heterosexual clergyman of Hussey’s generation. After retirement, Hussey was on close social terms with activists in Gay Lobby, part of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality that lobbied parliamentarians.121 Even after 1967, such social contacts would have been diffcult to maintain in the goldfsh bowl of Chichester, and so Hussey needed to go elsewhere to fnd companionship with those who understood this part

118 See, for instance, the entry for 9 August 1932, at MS Hussey 34, and those preceding it. 119 Grimes to Bell, 29 January 1955, at WSRO Episcopal Records, Acc. 11268, Box 4, Hussey fle. 120 Bryan-Brown, ‘Hussey at the Deanery’, p. 76. 121 ‘Richard’ to WH, 14 September 1979, at MS Hussey 449. 2 THE FORMATION OF A PATRON 47 of him. James Simpson-Manser recalled that Hussey was able to relax in the company of gay men, which explained the frequency of his visits to London. However, Hussey’s sexuality was also an open secret within the cathedral: well-known but seldom mentioned. Neither Bryan-Brown nor James Simpson-Manser, probably the two people to whom Hussey was closest, remember any ‘signifcant other’: no echoes in Hussey’s recollection of earlier relationships of particular signifcance. However, David Burton Evans recalled that Hussey’s particular interest in the company of younger men was well known, to the point of becoming the stuff of ribald humour among the gentlemen of the choir. Bryan-Brown’s sus- picion was that by the early 1970s, there was little physical element left in this—it had become a spectator sport—but the regular visits to the Deanery of various younger men from outside the city was noted, and at least one member of the cathedral congregation thought the dean ought to be more careful.122 This study is not concerned with establishing the pattern of Hussey’s sexual life; but the fact of his homosexuality is signifcant in relation to the working relationships and subsequent friendships he was to form. One commentator on Hussey, albeit only briefy, has drawn a parallel between Hussey and the character of Gustav von Aschenbach in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. Hussey certainly knew Venice, having visited the city more than once, in the company of Graham Sutherland.123 The range of Hussey’s reading was not wide, and so it is hard to show that he himself knew Mann’s novella. However, Hussey can hardly have avoided making some identifcation between Aschenbach and his own situation once Britten had created his own opera Death in Venice; an artistic ‘coming out’ that confrmed the open secret of his own sexuality. Aschenbach is caught between the desiccated contemplation of art, and the drive towards orgiastic abandon represented by the youth Tadzio, beautiful yet untouchable. Hussey too was caught between Apollonian devotion to the arts in all their forms, and the denial of the fullest expression of his own sexuality which had been unacceptable in law for almost all his life, and remained so in the discipline of his own church. Such a self- identifcation cannot be established from the sources, but Hussey’s own emotional constitution would have made it an attractive one.

122 Interview with Hilary Bryan-Brown; interview with David Burton Evans; interview with James Simpson-Manser. 123 Daily Express, 17 May 1957: cutting at MS Hussey 347. CHAPTER 3

The 1943 Jubilee festival at Northampton

St Matthew’s, Northampton Hussey’s memoir showed some ambivalence about a return to Northampton in 1937, to the vicarage of St Matthew’s, his childhood home. Both he and his brother had served in the church as children, and the progress of both boys would have been watched with the benign but keen interest that attends the children of the clergy. He had been attracted to London from an early age, an attraction that can only have been strengthened by his years as a curate. However, not to accept the position when it was offered seemed to Hussey to entail letting the parish down, and the advice he was receiving was to take it; so to Northampton he came (Image 3.1).1 John Rowden Hussey, Walter’s father, had served the parish since its foundation, a total of 48 years, and had reached the considerable age of 73. He and Hussey’s mother were to move to a new house outside the parish, but not far outside, and Rowden continued to celebrate communion on weekdays, and Lilian remained President of the Mothers’ Union. Even though his father stayed in the background after retiring, Hussey had still to contend with the presence of his immediate and only predecessor, store of the complete memory of the church’s short existence. St

1 M.C. Harrison (1993) The Centenary History of St Matthew’s Church and Parish, Northampton (Edinburgh: Pentland), p. 68; W. Hussey (1985) Patron of Art. The revival of a great tradition among modern artists (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p. 4.

Image 3.1 St Matthew’s Northampton, viewed from Collingwood Road. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 128

Matthew’s was, in a sense, a family business, with all the pressures that entails.2 Those pressures might still have been less, had Rowden Hussey not by all accounts been an imposing fgure both in St Matthew’s and in the town and diocese. One of his senior colleagues in the diocese, Norman Lang, archdeacon of Northampton, wrote of a ‘concentrated enthusiasm amounting almost to passion. There are few instances of more single-minded, single-hearted service’. Even in later years ‘Canon Hussey retains the fre and enthusiasm of youth. The spare form, the eager expression, the ringing voice, the forceful utterance seem to many of us just what they were years ago when we frst knew him.’ Rowden Hussey was known as ‘the beloved vicar’, apparently without irony.3

2 Harrison, St Matthew’s, pp. 82–83. 3 N. Lang (1932) ‘Foreword’ in Gertrude Hollis, St Matthew’s Northampton. The Oxford Movement in an English parish (Oxford: Mowbray), pp. v–vi. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 51

Hussey the younger was further constrained by the patronage of the living, which lay in the hands of another Northampton family, the Phipps. The family fortune had been made in brewing, in Northampton and elsewhere, and it was Pickering Phipps senior, alderman of the bor- ough, twice mayor and sometime MP for the town, who had planned to make available land for a new church to serve a new estate of housing. On the death of Phipps senior in 1890, his heirs provided the land and the funds to build the new church. Pickering Phipps, the son, was of a similar age to Rowden Hussey, and they were to remain friends. It was Phipps who led the procession to the ceremony during which the foundation stone was laid in 1891, and it was Phipps who wrote to Walter Hussey in 1937 to offer him the position at St Matthew’s. On Phipps’ death in 1937, only a week after Hussey’s institution, his funeral took place in a packed church with Husseys, father and son, in attendance. Hussey thus not only had to contend with the proximity of his predecessor, but with the very recent memory of a founder in whose own father’s memory the church had been built.4 The church building itself was the work of the local architect Matthew Holding, a pupil of J.L. Pearson. Holding was the Diocesan Architect and Surveyor, and had designed several of the other churches built to serve the expanding town, as well as an extension to the Guildhall. A churchman as well as a professional, Holding was churchwarden of the parish of St Edmund (one of his own buildings), and had previously designed the iron church that initially served the new parish of St Matthew’s, as well as the new vicarage, and most of the furniture and fttings within the new building. The builder was Henry Martin, at that time also Mayor of Northampton.5 In style, the church has little to distinguish it from many other Gothic Revival buildings of the time, although it found some admirers. John Betjeman, preaching at Hussey’s invitation in 1946, noted the ‘soaring vistas of pale stone, the superb proportion of window to wall space…

4 Harrison, St Matthew’s, pp. 8–11, 84. 5 Harrison, St Matthew’s, pp. 43, 12. 52 P. Webster the way the genius of Holding, the architect, leads your eye to the high altar’.6 Though Betjeman’s assessment of Holding is perhaps overstated, he was not the only observer to grasp the designs that the building has on the viewer. John Morton, vicar from 1975, noted that its very success in providing a backdrop for the Anglo-Catholic worship of the time at which it was built was a weakness in catering for the rapid change in liturgical thinking of the mid-twentieth century. Holding’s lofty building ‘was meant to lead the eye to a distant altar, where dignifed ceremony would proclaim the unchanging otherness of God. The ideal was worship by impression, by appeal to the aesthetic senses, rather than by community participation.’7 In this sense, the building provided the ideal setting for the realisation of Hussey’s artistic vision (Image 3.2). The worshipping tradition that Hussey inherited from his father matched the building perfectly. St Matthew’s had been founded partly due to the infuence of Charles Magee, bishop of Peterborough, to counter the strong Nonconformist tradition in the town by the provision of an Anglo-Catholic alternative. From the frst, Rowden Hussey, much infuenced by the Oxford Movement, adopted an Anglo-Catholic style of worship. A weekly Sunday Eucharist was instituted from the start, followed shortly after by a daily Eucharist, once the new building was in use.8 Communion was celebrated by the priest facing to the east, clad in vestments of the requisite colour for the season. Incense came into use in 1926; reservation of the sacrament began in 1930. In 1925, St Matthew’s hosted one of the series of national Eucharistic Congresses organised by the English Church Union, the principal Anglo-Catholic group. 1933 saw lectures and an exhibition in celebration of the centenary of the Oxford Movement.9 Without attracting the kind of attention paid to more daring parishes elsewhere, St Matthew’s could not have been mistaken for anything other than an Anglo-Catholic parish.

6 A sermon preached by Betjeman in May 1946, as reprinted on the dustjacket of Hussey, Patron of Art. 7 Harrison, St Matthew’s, p. xix. 8 Harrison, St Matthew’s, pp. 4, 63. 9 Harrison, St Matthew’s, pp. 64–6. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 53

Image 3.2 The interior of St Matthew’s looking towards the high altar. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 128 54 P. Webster

The Jubilee Festival of 1943 St Matthew’s Day 1943 was to mark the Golden Jubilee of the church and the parish. September 21st had traditionally been marked each year by a visit from a visiting preacher, and a lunch. After six years at Northampton, Hussey saw an opportunity to expand the scope of the event to begin to address the disconnection between the church and the arts, and his plan was fvefold: to commission a new piece of music and a new piece of art, and to secure performances from a vocal soloist, an organist, and a symphony orchestra.10 And these were to be no ordinary artists, composers and performers; Hussey showed himself, in 1943 as he was to remain, only interested in those he considered the very fnest. Hussey seems to have had no sense of the unimportance of St Matthew’s in the national scene, and the improbability of engaging the interest of prominent national fgures in a provincial suburban parish church without particular architectural merit and with no tradition of such patronage. One of the particular frustrations of the Hussey Papers is that Hussey kept few copies of his own letters, and as such, the historian is required to read the content of these between the lines of the responses he received. But the frst of many such exchanges was with William Walton, and it established a modus operandi with which Hussey persisted from then on. But why Walton? Hussey’s recollection was that he wanted to fnd a younger composer, who would not cost too much, and one who had not yet written much church music.11 Walton had been born in 1902 and had already under his belt the First Symphony and the cantata Belshazzar’s Feast. Indeed, his star had risen suffciently far to have been invited to write the march Crown Imperial for the coronation of George VI in 1937. Walton, then, was hardly obscure, a struggling student looking for an early chance, but it was true that he had not written a great deal of church music. Although it is not clear whether Hussey knew the piece, Walton’s miniature A Litany, to words by Phineas Fletcher, had been written while a precociously young undergraduate; there was little else for church use.

10 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 4. 11 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 4. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 55

It is possible that Hussey was put in mind of Walton by a mutual acquaintance, Thomas Banks Strong. Before encountering Hussey at Cuddesdon, Strong had been dean of Christ Church, Oxford, in the choir of which Walton had been a boy chorister, and where he then stayed on as an undergraduate. Himself a doctor of music and a pianist, Strong had allowed the choristers the run of his house, and played some of the most modern music to them: Walton recalled hearing Strong play Schoenberg’s piano music. Walton also showed Strong his frst compositions for comment, and Strong subsequently followed Walton’s career, being later ‘astonished’ by the frst London performance of Belshazzar’s Feast in 1931 and writing to Walton to congratulate him.12 Hussey evidently wrote to Walton in late 1942, inviting him to write for St Matthew’s. Walton’s reply was brief, scrupulously polite but quite clear, in which he professed himself too busy to promise to produce anything, and concluding that he ought to refuse straight away. Hussey thought the letter equivocal enough to merit another attempt, almost by return of post, to which Walton replied in the same terms but even more briefy.13 This time, Hussey let the matter rest, although remarkably his account in Patron of Art suggests that Walton had replied ‘still slightly hesitantly’.14 From the beginning, Hussey’s exchanges were marked by this curious combination of enthusiasm, naivety and an inability to take no for an answer.

Organ and Orchestra Securing a recital on the organ at St Matthew’s was the least controversial of Hussey’s plans, and the one for which there were already precedents. The organ at St Matthew’s was built by J.W. Walker and Sons in 1895 with the advice of G.C. Martin of St Paul’s Cathedral, who had directed the music at the consecration in 1893. It was known as a fne instrument, and had attracted visiting recitalists almost from the frst,

12 S. Walton (1988) William Walton. Behind the Facade (Oxford: OUP), pp. 43–44; H. Anson (1949) T.B. Strong. Bishop, musician, dean, vice-chancellor (London: SPCK), pp. 106, 116–117. 13 Walton to WH, 14 December 1942, and then 20 December 1942, at MS Hussey 372. 14 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 5. 56 P. Webster such that by 1902 there had already been three hundred recitals, mostly by Charles King the incumbent organist, but with regular visitors.15 Hussey had also broadened the scope of the recital programme to take in instruments other than the organ. The pianist Harold Craxton was on the staff of the Royal Academy of Music, which had relocated to Northampton to escape German bombing, and was also a friend of the curate Methuen Clarke.16 Craxton had given a recital in the Church Room in 1940, to raise funds for the new church hall, and then a second with a vocal soloist the following July, this time in the church building itself. St Matthew’s also hosted a number of concerts organised by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts.17 George Thalben-Ball had been organist of the Temple Church in London since 1919, and (since 1941) musical adviser to the BBC’s religious broadcasting department, as well as a regular broadcast recitalist. In 1936, he had given a recital for Hussey at St Paul, Vicarage Gate, and it seems to have taken little persuasion to bring him to Northampton to give a recital on 25th September, the Saturday following St Matthew’s Day.18 The other recital Hussey had in mind took rather more in the way of pressure. Although Hussey presented the 1943 Festival as the beginning of things at Northampton, it is worth noting that his approach to the BBC about obtaining the services of the BBC Symphony Orchestra was built on an existing connection. From at least as early as 1941, St Matthew’s was being used as the venue for the broadcasting of late evening organ recitals. The London-based Belgian organist Guy Weitz gave a recital in November 1941 under blackout conditions and with tight restrictions on publicity as to venue, for which St Matthew’s received a fee of £2 2s.19 It may have been on this occasion that Hussey made contact with the pianist Val Drewry, at that time on the BBC’s staff in nearby Bedford.20 It was shortly afterwards that Drewry himself accompanied the violin- ist Marjorie Hayward and cellist Norina Semino in a CEMA concert at

15 M. Nicholas (1968) Muse at St Matthew’s. A short history of the artistic traditions of St Matthew’s Church Northampton (Northampton: St Matthew’s), pp. 3–4. 16 Harrisson, St Matthew’s, p. 114. 17 See the set of concert programmes at MS Hussey 121. 18 Recital programme for 21 October 1936 at MS Hussey 111; Thalben-Ball to WH, 15 September 1943, at MS Hussey 117. 19 D.F. Gretton to WH, 30 September 1941, at MS Hussey 286. 20 Drewry to WH, 29 November 1941, at MS Hussey 286. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 57

St Matthew’s, and again in January 1942.21 (Semino was subsequently to perform at Northampton with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears.) Already in 1941, Hussey was building a network of contacts through which he might achieve his ends. The visit of the BBC Symphony Orchestra to St Matthew’s was an early example of the extraordinary tenacity that was key to Hussey’s later successes. Hussey apparently frst approached the BBC in the person of Arthur Bliss, who in April 1943 was the corporation’s Director of Music. The date was agreed as St Matthew’s Day itself, but in July the orchestra became unavailable due to changes in scheduling elsewhere. Bliss explained that the original request had only been accepted because of the festival, and to rearrange for any other day risked being construed as an unfairness to other churches.22 Hussey’s letter of disappointment does not survive, but it was evidently effective in changing Bliss’ mind; two weeks later he had come to think a later visit justifable as an opportunity to show the people of Northampton the orchestra, especially as the town did not have its own concert hall.23 The date was thus fxed for Saturday October 2nd, 11 days after St Matthew’s Day. There still remained the question of the costs, which the BBC expected the church to meet. The cost of bringing all the members of the orchestra to Northampton by train, and their instruments by van, cost a little over £15. The cost would have been higher had Hussey not been able to raise a small army of hostesses in the parish who each took a number of players home for lunch. Some were disappointed to fnd themselves with rationed food prepared and on the lunch table, but no guests to consume it. An apologetic letter from the chairman of the orchestra committee, evidently prompted by Hussey’s complaint to the conductor Sir Adrian Boult, explained that the four culprits had already accepted invitations from local friends and family.24 Despite all this, the occasion was a success. First was a concert with a lighter programme for children, although the orchestra was late, due to a delayed train, leaving W.K. Stanton, organist and composer and part of

21 Concert programme fles, MS Hussey 124. 22 Arthur Bliss to WH, 6 July 1943, at MS Hussey 287. 23 Arthur Bliss to WH, 21 July 1943, at MS Hussey 287. 24 Ernest Hall to WH, 6 October 1943, at MS Hussey 287; Adrian Boult to WH, 4 October 1943, at MS Hussey 287. 58 P. Webster the BBC’s Midland Region staff, with thirty minutes in which to give an impromptu organ recital from memory. The players were eventually dis- gorged from a bus and, after abandoning coats and luggage under their chairs, began to play. Boult, who had given several series of children’s concerts, gave a talk introducing the orchestra, after which further ami- able confusion ensued when Boult invited the children in the audience to come forward to take a closer look at the players and their instruments.25 One of the staff of the BBC noted the atmosphere in the church: informal, happy, full of life, but without ‘irreverence’.26 For the broadcast, the orchestra played a programme of Gabrieli, Bach, Wagner (Hussey’s particular favourite), and Delius, ending with Schumann’s third symphony, the Rhenish. The fourth of Schumann’s movements, an evocation of a solemn procession in a German cathedral, must have sounded particularly well in the rich acoustic of St Matthew’s. Although at this time the use of church buildings for concerts was relatively unusual, the reception the event received was generally positive. The Northampton Chronicle and Echo reported an appreciative audience in a crowded church.27 The Northampton Independent reproduced a photograph of Boult and the orchestra on its front page, welcoming a ‘signifcant and gratifying herald of post-war developments’. ‘Will the Church again emerge as a medium of the propagation of the arts as well as of spirituality?’ the paper’s correspondent asked. ‘St Matthew’s, to its credit, has added welcome weight to an affrmative answer.’28 Hussey was to continue to try to exploit his new-made contacts with the BBC. First of these was Arthur Bliss, a well-established composer alongside his role with the Corporation. In May 1948, by which time Hussey had more than one successful anthem commission to show, the approach was made to Bliss to write an anthem for St Matthew’s Day. As with Walton, the frst answer was negative; and, as with Walton, Hussey kept trying, but also without success.29

25 Programmes at MS Hussey 287; W.K. Stanton to WH, 2 October 1943, at MS Hussey 287; unidentifed local newspaper, 4 October 1943, cutting at MS Hussey 474. 26 W.K. Stanton to WH, 2 October 1943, at MS Hussey 287. 27 ‘B.B.C. Orchestra’s Church Concert’, Northampton Chronicle and Echo, 4 October 1943. 28 ‘Orchestral Concerts in a Church’, Northampton Independent, 8 October 1943 p. 1. 29 Bliss to WH, 6 May 1948 and 22 May 1948, at MS Hussey 287; Bliss to WH, 13 May 1948, at MS Hussey 320. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 59

A second contact at the BBC was W. K. Stanton, one of many musicians doing war work in broadcasting. When contact was frst made, Stanton visited Northampton, and Hussey’s hospitality seems to have been key in making a signifcant ally in the twists and turns ahead in bringing the orchestra to St Matthew’s. Stanton was not the last to make rhapsodic mention of Mrs Ada Cotton, Hussey’s house- keeper.30 Hussey’s relationship with Stanton was one of the frst such that he established, and as was to become typical, he maintained contact long after the immediate occasion had passed. Stanton attended the St Matthew’s Day service in subsequent years, and was also invited to the unveiling of Graham Sutherland’s Crucifxion in 1946.31 In 1945, he was suffciently struck by the new anthem from Lennox Berkeley to moot the idea of broadcasting it along with the Britten and the Rubbra anthems for Northampton.32 Although it appears that it came to nothing, Stanton mooted the idea of composing an anthem for St Matthew’s himself, and the Hussey Papers include copies of some of Stanton’s work.33 Although the correspondence tailed off after Stanton left the BBC, Hussey was later to sound Stanton out in 1956 about the coming vacancy on the organ bench at Chichester, having heard that Stanton was about to retire as professor of music at Bristol University.34

Britten and Tippett Having been rebuffed by William Walton, Hussey was still in need of someone to compose a new piece for the choir for the 1943 festival, and it was Benjamin Britten that next attracted his attention. Not quite thirty years old, Britten was a little younger than Hussey, but had already established himself with works such as the Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937), Les Illuminations (1939) and the Sinfonia da Requiem (1940). Also to Britten’s name was challenging choral music with sacred texts, such as A Boy was Born (1933), and the Hymn to St Cecilia and A

30 Stanton to WH, 2 October 1943, at MS Hussey 287. 31 Stanton to WH, 24 September 1943 at MS Hussey 287; manuscript list of invitees, at MS Hussey 346. 32 Stanton to WH, 24 September 1945, at MS Hussey 291. 33 Stanton’s letter to Hussey of 2 October 1943 (at MS Hussey 287) enclosed an unnamed motet, which is no longer with the letter. 34 Stanton to WH, 4 January 1956, at MS Hussey 142. 60 P. Webster

Ceremony of Carols (both 1942). Despite this, critical opinion was still divided over the worth of Britten’s work; the critical favour of the later years of his career was not yet his.35 More signifcantly, Britten had already written liturgical music for use in Anglican liturgy: the Te Deum in C, from 1934.36 Written for the London church of St Mark’s, North Audley Street, it was frst performed in St Michael’s Cornhill in 1935 with George Thalben-Ball at the organ, and conducted by Harold Darke, organist of St Michael’s and himself a composer of church music. It was published by Oxford University Press, and broadcast in February 1936, again with Harold Darke.37 Britten’s own religious views are hard to establish with any precision. Although in earlier life he had a habit of churchgoing (in the Church of England), Peter Pears was ‘not sure that he would really have called himself a Christian’ by the time they frst met.38 During Britten’s appeal against his conviction for conscientious objection in June 1942, he argued that the local tribunal had ‘failed to appreciate the religious background of my conscience trying to tie me down too narrowly to a belief in the divinity of Christ. I don’t seek as suggested to pick and choose from his teaching, but I regard the whole context of his teaching and example as the standard by which I must judge.’39 Alongside this form of Christian ethics without the metaphysics was the aesthetic appeal of beauty found in religious places, such as the Catalan monastery in which he heard the music of Vittoria in 1936. On the same trip, he noted the ‘sensuous beauty of darkness & incense’ in Barcelona Cathedral. ‘The stuffy sensual atmosphere’ of the Roman Catholic worship he found in the fction of Ronald Firbank in 1937 ‘moves me a lot—I feel that it wouldn’t take much to turn me R.C.’40 There was also, in Britten, a

35 P. Kildea (2014) Britten. A life in the twentieth century (London: Penguin), pp. 121, 209. 36 There was also an accompanying setting of the Jubilate Deo, in E fat, which was with- drawn and only frst performed in 1984. 37 H. Carpenter (1992) Benjamin Britten. A biography (London: Faber), p. 72. 38 Carpenter, Britten, p. 113; for a maximal interpretation of Britten’s Christianity, see G. Elliott (2006) Benjamin Britten: the spiritual dimension (Oxford: OUP): Britten’s relationship with Hussey is discussed at pp. 17–23. 39 D. Mitchell and P. Reed (eds.) (1998) Letters from a Life: the selected letters of Benjamin Britten: volume 2: 1939–1945 (London: Faber), p. 1058. 40 Carpenter, Britten, pp. 79–80, 92. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 61 view of the relationship between the churches and the arts very close to Hussey’s own. ‘Every real artist must really have some work in him to do for the Ch[urch]’, Britten was to tell Hussey over tea at the vicarage at Northampton. ‘He may not be a regular churchgoer but he must have a religion; more than that he must realise what art owes to the Ch[urch] and that much of the best has been done for the Ch[urch]. Their separation has been such a tremendous loss for both.’41 Whether Hussey or his organist were aware of Britten’s religious music in 1943 is unclear. If they were, it seems not to have been the impetus for the approach. Hussey later recalled that it was a radio broadcast of the Sinfonia da Requiem, shortly after the rebuff from Walton, that had frst attracted him. Shortly after, Britten gave a radio interview during which he selected certain favourite pieces, among them the Requiem by Verdi, and Mozart’s Ave verum corpus, Hussey’s favourite anthem. Perhaps seeing someone of similar taste to his own, Hussey wrote to Britten, frst at the BBC, from where the letter was forwarded to Britten’s publisher, Boosey and Hawkes, and then on to Britten himself.42 Even with this limited acquaintance with Britten, it was surely obvious to Hussey that Britten was unlikely to produce music in the tradition of English church music that moved in what one critic described as ‘grand, dignifed and spacious measures’—it is hard to conceive of a less apt description of Britten’s work.43 It is a measure of Hussey’s dis- tinctive achievement that it was nonetheless Britten he chose. Hussey at this stage had nothing more specifc in mind than an anthem in four parts, to suit the capabilities of the Northampton choir, but stressed the quality of the organ and the signifcance placed on St Matthew’s Day. The terms should be whichever Britten thought appropriate. Hussey added a postscript: ‘On reading through this letter, I feel more than ever how impertinent it is to send it, but I hope you will forgive me and put it down to enthusiasm for a great “bee” of mine— closer association between the arts and the Church.’44 Hussey was irked

41 Hussey’s verbatim account of the conversation was recorded in manuscript soon afterwards: MS Hussey 336. 42 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 5. 43 E. Routley (1964) Twentieth Century Church Music (London: Herbert Jenkins), p. 31. 44 WH to Britten, 22 March 1943, reproduced at Mitchell and Reed, Letters: volume 2, p. 1138. 62 P. Webster to receive a dismissive reply from Leslie Boosey, but mollifed by a positive response from Britten himself shortly after. ‘As I also have a “bee” about closer connection between the arts & the Church’, Britten replied, ‘I am sure that I shall have an idea before next September for an anthem for your jubilee. Something lively for such an occasion, don’t you think?’ Hussey replied with details of the choir and their capabilities, and Britten came to hear the choir some weeks later.45 It was probably during this frst visit to Northampton that Britten and Hussey agreed on the text for what was to become Rejoice in the Lamb: the poem ‘Jubilate Agno’ by Christopher Smart. Written between 1758 and 1763 whilst Smart was incarcerated due to mental illness, it was ‘doxology, evangelical and philosophical manifesto, personal diary, and commonplace book all in one, as well as a remarkable experiment in poetic form.’46 First published in 1939 in an edition by William Force Stead, Anglican clergyman and intimate of T.S. Eliot, it was largely received as a curiosity.47 However, it evidently interested W.H. Auden enough to draw it to Britten’s attention while the latter was in North America between 1939 and 1942.48 One well-disposed critic referred to Britten’s penchant for ‘freak poets and experimental poetic design’, and Smart’s poem very defnitely fed this aspect of Britten’s appetite.49 Cast in a responsorial form that evokes the antiphonal singing of the psalms in Anglican worship, insofar as an overarching purpose can be discerned, the work is an extended meditation on the praise of all members of creation to their Creator. The sections that Britten selected, with the help of the novelist and critic Edward Sackville-West, sharpen and emphasise this element of Smart’s vision, whilst minimising the local and particular. Hussey described the theme as ‘the worship of God, by all created beings and things, each in

45 Britten to WH, 5 April 1943, at Mitchell and Reed, Letters: volume 2, p. 1142; Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 5–6. 46 K. Williamson, ‘Christopher Smart’, at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/christopher-smart, accessed 1 October 2015. 47 On Stead’s role in Eliot’s conversion to Anglicanism, see L. Gordon (1977) Eliot’s Early Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 130–131. 48 Carpenter, Britten, p. 188. 49 H. F. Redlich (1952) ‘The Choral Music’ in D. Mitchell and H. Keller (eds.) Benjamin Britten. A commentary on his works from a group of specialists (London: Rockliff), p. 95. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 63 its own way.’50 Even with this concentration of Smart’s theme, the text still demands what one critic called a ‘detachment from conventional solemnity’, with cats, mice, the language of fowers, letters of the alpha- bet and the rhymes of different musical instruments.51 Although Smart’s vision is not intentionally playful, the text allowed Britten an opportunity for play, which is most evident in the section on the mouse. At the end of May, Britten wrote by way of apology for the delay, as he was both busy and still working on the selection of the text: ‘I am afraid I have gone ahead, and used a bit about the cat Jeffrey, but I don’t see how it could hurt anyone—he is such a nice cat.’52 Rejoice in the Lamb was not the only new work in the 1943 service, although it has attracted the most attention. Hussey also wanted a fanfare at the beginning of the service to mark the arrival of the bishop. Britten recommended that Michael Tippett write it, and agreed to approach Tippett about doing so.53 Britten and Tippett had met the previous year, when Peter Pears had been the tenor soloist for a performance at Morley College in London, where Tippett was Director of Music.54 Although older than Britten, Tippett was not yet so well established, although he was already highly regarded amongst professional musicians. His major breakthrough was to come the following year with the oratorio A Child of Our Time.55 As to religious music, he had no track record at all, although at the same time as he was working for Hussey, he was also writing for Canterbury Cathedral. The piece for Canterbury, the unaccompanied motet Plebs angelica (1944) was Tippett’s frst choral composition specifcally for church use, and part of what turned out to be a very small corpus of such work.56 Britten and Tippett had something more in common than composition: being conscientious objectors to the war. Both men had appeared before tribunals. Britten’s frst hearing in 1942 had ruled

50 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 8. 51 Routley, Twentieth Century Church Music, p. 71. 52 Britten to WH, 28 May 1943, at Mitchell and Reed, Letters: volume 2, p. 1157. 53 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 11. 54 Carpenter, Britten, p. 192. 55 I. Kemp (1984) Tippett: the Composer and his Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press) p. 52. 56 Kemp, Tippett, p. 180. 64 P. Webster that he be called up for non-combatant duties, a decision later over- turned on appeal.57 Tippett had been unable even to accept duties at home in air raid precautions or fghting fres, and so spent two months in Wormwood Scrubs prison in the summer of 1943, being released only a month before St Matthew’s Day.58 There was opposition, not always muted, amongst both the music press and the performers ahead of the premiere of Britten’s opera Peter Grimes in 1945, on account of both Britten and Pears being homosexuals and ‘conchies’, as was Eric Crozier, the director.59 There was a durable strand of Christian paci- fsm in England; Britten and Tippett were more than casually involved in the Peace Pledge Union, and Britten had been supported at his tribunal by Canon Stuart Morris of the PPU.60 However, by no means all Anglicans were sympathetic to conscientious objectors, and so Hussey took a considerable risk in being seen to patronise either of them. To engage both at the same time was brave indeed. Hussey then went to talk to the commanding offcer of the Northamptonshire Regiment, along with its bandmaster, Charles Marriott, about performing the fanfare. It is not known whether the two men, whose regimental comrades were at war, had any objections to performing the music of a conscientious objector, if indeed they knew the situation.61 In any case, they agreed, and Hussey wrote to Tippett con- frming the instruments available. Tippett set to work at the beginning of September, and by the 15th the work was with the copyist. Hussey evidently asked Tippett to make a gift to him of the score, to which Tippett agreed.62 Tippett’s piece was named the Fanfare No. 1 for four horns, three trumpets, three trombones. Tippett thought well enough of it to suggest (directly to Adrian Boult) that the BBC orchestra also play it during their concert.63 However, one later critic thought the fanfare gives ‘an oddly inconsequential impression’, perhaps due to Tippett not wanting

57 Carpenter, Britten, pp. 714, 176–177. 58 Kemp, Tippett, pp. 41–42. 59 Carpenter, Britten, pp. 219, 220. 60 Kildea, Britten, p. 205. 61 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 11. 62 Tippett to WH, 31 August 1943, and 15 September 1943, both at MS Hussey 351. 63 Tippett to WH, 12 September 1943, at MS Hussey 351. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 65 to distract attention from the Britten anthem that followed. Ian Kemp also suspected that something in Tippett rebelled against becoming an ‘offcial’ composer, an impression borne out by the commissions he subsequently accepted.64 As became Hussey’s method, he and Tippett were to remain in touch for a number of years after 1943. Hussey invited Tippett to the unveiling of Henry Moore’s Madonna and Child (of which more is written below); Tippett was otherwise engaged, but was impressed by a set of photographs that Hussey sent him. Tippett, in turn, arranged for Hussey to be sent a copy of Plebs angelica, and offered to help arrange a concert from a visiting quartet, playing works by Britten and Tippett.65 Hussey also evidently wrote to congratulate Tippett on A Child of our Time around the time of the frst broadcast performance on the BBC Home Service.66 As with many others, Hussey also returned to Tippett for a subsequent commission, in 1953. Tippett declined, due to the pressure of other commissions, and the correspondence lapsed.67 St Matthew’s Day 1943, September 21st, was a Tuesday. The parish had continued to hold the annual festival Eucharist during the week, rather than moving it to the nearest weekend, and Hussey recalled that despite the need to take time off work, the service was usually very well attended.68 Britten and Tippett both donned cassock and surplice and joined the main procession, sitting in the choir of the church for the duration of the service. Britten had apparently some misgivings, but was persuaded by Tippett. Rejoice in the Lamb followed the conclusion of the service; Britten directed the performance, and the alto solo was taken by Methuen Clarke, curate at St Matthew’s. Clarke later recalled that his voice had croaked on one of the several low notes, at which he caught Britten’s eye and received a wink, and a thumbs-up sign.69 Britten was pleased, both with the piece and with Hussey’s choir, and also with

64 Kemp, Tippett, pp. 181, 41. 65 Tippett to WH, 9 February 1944, 15 June 1944, at MS Hussey 351. 66 Tippett to WH, 19 January 1945, at MS Hussey 351. The broadcast took place on 17 January, preceded on 14 January by a preview of the work, with Tippett speaking, and musical extracts from Joan Cross, Peter Pears and the BBC Chorus: Radio Times 1111, 12 January 1945, pp. 6, 12. 67 Tippett to WH, 25 February 1953, at MS Hussey 351. 68 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 10. 69 Carpenter, Britten, p. 189. 66 P. Webster

Charles Barker at the organ, faced with a highly unusual part to play, far removed from the run of organ music of the time.70 Hussey was always assiduous in using the occasion of the festival to invite infuential guests, a pattern set from this frst occasion in 1943. No fewer than two hundred people sat down to lunch after the service: gen- erosity made possible by the sacrifce of ration stamps by the housewives of the parish. In part, the purpose of the festival was the celebration of current and former relationships within the church. There were no fewer than fve former curates, and three bishops, including Norman Lang (now assistant bishop of Peterborough) and E.S. Woods of Lichfeld who had preached. Also present were Earl Spencer and his wife, as their seat at Althorp was not far from Northampton.71 But it was also an occasion for the building of a network. Peter Pears had brought the soprano Joan Cross and the conductor Lawrance Collingwood from Wolverhampton, where the Sadler’s Wells opera company was on tour to avoid London. (Cross was soon to take a role in Peter Grimes, and give the frst performance of Tippett’s A Child of our time.) Also there was W.K. Stanton along with Harold Williamson of the Chelsea School of Art (which had been evacuated to Northampton), and the music critic of the Times, Frank Howes.72 The private reactions (or at least those voiced directly to Hussey) were overwhelmingly positive. At the luncheon, Tippett had spoken of the ‘tremendous satisfaction to young artists when asked to do something for the Church’, and wrote later that ‘we all wished that other men had equal courage & imagination to do such things’.73 Mary Behrend was a patron of Britten (the Second String Quartet of 1945) as well as of Stanley Spencer. After hearing the broadcast, she wrote to congratulate Hussey, wondering whether Britten had been awed by the experience of working for the Church, but hoping that he would carry on in the same way.74 The longer-term signifcance of what Hussey was trying to do at St Matthew’s was not lost on Norman Lang. He and Britten evidently

70 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 13. 71 Harrison, St Matthew’s, p. 93. 72 Nicholas, Muse at St Matthew’s, p. 7; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 12. 73 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 12–13. 74 Behrend to WH, 31 October 1943, at MS Hussey 117. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 67 talked at length over lunch, and Lang had gathered that Britten and many other artists were dissatisfed with contemporary materialism and hungry for the spiritual. Here, thought Lang, was an opportunity for Hussey to minister, since (highly unusually amongst the clergy) he could, through his own love of the arts, meet the artist half way.75 As is explored in Chap. 9, this frst foray into patronage was also the beginning of Hussey’s work as unoffcial Anglican chaplain to the arts, precisely the meeting part way that Lang envisioned. The critical and lay reaction to the piece was, in general, very positive. The precentor of Canterbury Cathedral, Joseph Poole, wrote to Hussey with congratulations after receiving an early copy of the score. Britten had been very skilful, he thought, in making music in a contemporary idiom which was ‘vital’ and yet sympathetic to the voice, and within the capabilities of a parish choir.76 Similar letters of congratulations came from members of the public, and other parish organists. Hussey had been canny in cultivating the national media as well in advance of the Festival, securing advance notice in both the Church Times and the Daily Telegraph: a policy that paid dividends in later coverage.77 The music critic of the Times, Frank Howes, thought that ‘the spirit of the curious, vivid poem has been caught, and a work not to be placed in any of the usual categories, but certainly beautiful, is the outcome of a commission by the Church for a modern work of religious art.’78 For another critic, it was a ‘charming conception’ in which there was ‘no pretence, no leaden seriousness. We are simply confronted with spontaneous, varied, aristocratic music to Smart’s enchanting words.’79 Strikingly absent from both Hussey’s papers and the press was any signifcant hostility to the piece, either on grounds of a highly unconventional text or an equally adventurous style. What of the piece’s signifcance in Britten’s oeuvre, and the development of church music more generally? On a technical level, more than one critic has noted the highly individual use of the organ, requiring a

75 Lang to WH, 23 September 1943, at MS Hussey 117. 76 Poole to WH, 16 October 1943 at MS Hussey 302. 77 ‘Peterborough’ column in Daily Telegraph, 21 September 1943; ‘The Passing Week’, Church Times, 17 September 1943: see cuttings at MS Hussey 474. 78 Patron of Art, p. 12; F. Howes (1943), ‘A festival cantata’, The Times, 22 September 1943, p. 2. 79 ‘New Brittens’, The Observer 28 November 1943. 68 P. Webster kind of handling not often asked of organists of the time, and producing ‘effects intermediate between those of the keyboard and the orchestra.’80 Despite this idiosyncrasy, the writing for the organ was for another later critic ‘quite remarkably apt’; Britten ‘does not try to make the organ sound like anything but an organ’, but succeeded in drawing from it effects that were both unusual yet right for his compositional purpose.81 The piece also broke with many of the conventions in form of much Victorian and Edwardian church music. Absent are passages of fugal writing or signifcant textual repetition, or the use of thematic material to bind the whole together. There is, instead, a sequence of movements, each a distinct musical response to the text at that point, which bears more relation to the song cycle form with which Britten was much preoccupied.82 This formal innovation, along with its unusual time sig- natures, extensive use of vocal soloists, and unison and quasi recitativo writing for the choir, make the piece unique among the repertoire of its period. Britten had also achieved, although not for the frst time, a match between the piece and the needs of the place for which it was written. It has often been observed that Britten thrived when faced with a particular circumstance and constraints in and within which to work, such that an unusually high proportion of his most successful works are of an occasional nature. Rejoice in the Lamb challenged the choir of St Matthew’s such that they worked hard at it, but it was not so diffcult as to dis- hearten them.83 A similar effect is still observable in singers encountering the work today. For some critics, Britten also achieved a remarkable and perhaps unparalleled closeness of poetic intention and music, of whichever genre. The poet Peter Porter thought Britten’s selection of the text so apt that the text has ‘a wholeness which is true to the unique vision Smart was serving’; it serves indeed as ‘a biopsy of the poem.’ And once the text was in hand, even if the work was too slight to be one of the greatest, it contained ‘some of the purest responses ever made by a musician to the

80 The Times, 22 September 1943, p. 2. 81 Routley, Twentieth Century Church Music, p. 70. 82 Redlich, ‘The Choral Music’, pp. 83–84. 83 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 11. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 69 very heart of that mystery which we know as poetry.’84 Hussey’s achievement was to allow and indeed encourage Britten to create such a remarkable piece from a text from which many would have shied away. Hussey’s friendship with Britten and Pears lasted until Britten’s death, and beyond that in the case of Pears. It cannot be established at which point Hussey ‘came out’ to Britten as a homosexual. It is also not clear how aware Hussey was of the gossip, little of it affectionate, concerning Britten and Pears’ relationship.85 However, in later years, Hussey knew Britten and Pears well enough to inform Pears’ biographer Christopher Headington (who had himself written for St Matthew’s) that Pears was the dominant sexual partner.86 Regardless of the timing, it is highly likely that the warmth of the relationship between Britten and Hussey, which seems to have been immediate, was in part due to their shared sexuality. There was more to the friendship that developed between Britten and Hussey than this shared status as outsiders. John Bridcut has shown the importance to Britten of the childlike, and the company of children, which explains the extraordinary prominence of children’s voices in his music.87 There was a childlike element in Hussey’s character to match, which seems to have issued in an instinctive understanding of children. The leader of the local Northampton cadets noted Hussey’s rapport with the St Matthew’s choristers in 1943; Hussey certainly knew what to do to engage their attention, he thought.88 Hussey may well have been a Scout leader, as one of his notebooks contains extensive notes and hand- drawn diagrams on camping, lighting fres and assembling useful ‘camp gadgets’.89 Britten and Hussey found the connection early. In conversation at Northampton, Britten spoke of the qualities that he most liked in children: they were ‘simple, unsophisticated & uninhibited’. One of the choristers at St Matthew’s asked Britten for his autograph along with

84 P. Porter (1984) ‘Composer and poet’ in C. Palmer (ed.) The Britten Companion (London: Faber), pp. 271–285, at p. 276. 85 Kildea, Britten, p. 234. 86 Hussey is named as Headington’s source by Humphrey Carpenter: Carpenter, Britten, p. 130. However, it is not clear from Headington’s account that Hussey was indeed the source: C. Headington (1992) Peter Pears. A biography, p. 321. 87 J. Bridcut (2006) Britten’s Children (London: Faber), passim. 88 R.C. Amos to WH, 8 November 1943, at MS Hussey 117. 89 Notebook, undated and unpaginated, at MS Hussey 45. 70 P. Webster

Image 3.3 Hussey, Benjamin Britten (far right) and some of Hussey’s neighbours and friends in Chichester, in the Deanery garden, probably late 1950s. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 302

‘any letters he had after his name’, which Britten endorsed, after some encouragement, A.R.A.M. (Associate of the Royal Academy of Music) and ‘School Cert[ifcate], 5 credits.’ The joke was then to spill over into the list of questions about the printing of the text of Rejoice in the Lamb, sent by Hussey in the form of a mock school examination paper.90 After 1943, Britten and Pears visited Northampton at least twice and possibly three times between 1944 and 1946, most likely staying at the vicarage each time. Hussey was admitted to the group of those to whom Britten expressed himself freely in person and in writing. In 1948, Hussey sent a gift, concerned that the two had fallen out during a recent visit. Britten wrote to thank Hussey for his forgiveness, because ‘deep

90 Hussey’s note of the conversation is at MS Hussey 336, unpaginated; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 7; Mitchell and Reed, Letters from a Life, volume 2, pp. 1159–1160. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 71 down in my much scarred conscience I’m aware of having behaved like a beast, frstly for having been stupidly touchy, and then out of sheer slack- ness not doing anything to prevent that impression from growing.’91 This pattern of artistic engagement and personal friendship was to persist until the end of Britten’s life (Image 3.3). Hussey visited Aldeburgh to preach at the Festival in 1962, and sent a donation towards the rebuilding of the Maltings at Snape after a catastrophic fre in 1969.92 Amongst the correspondence were greetings cards of all kinds: best wishes for both men’s recovery from illnesses; postcards from Britten and Pears as they toured Europe; birthday wishes from Hussey to Britten. With Britten, as with many others whom Hussey commissioned, the relationship was a mixture of professional engagement between client and patron, pastoral concern for the person, and simple mutual delight in each other’s company.

Henry Moore Force of circumstance meant that Hussey had to wait a further six months before he was to realise the ffth and fnal part of his design for the 1943 festival: a painting or sculpture. The elapse of time allows the observer to see more clearly the great difference between the public reaction to Britten, Tippett, Thalben-Ball and Boult on the one hand, and what was to become the Madonna and Child by Henry Moore, on the other. Britten’s piece had been surprising, certainly, but few voices ques- tioned its ftness for purpose. Similarly, there were few objections to the principle of having professional musicians play ostensibly secular music in a church building. One of Hussey’s guest preachers, Arthur Greaves, suffragan bishop of Grimsby (and formerly vicar of another Northampton parish) had welcomed Hussey’s venture as a natural continuation of the Anglo-Catholicism which Hussey’s father had instituted: ‘here has been patiently taught and practised the Catholic faith in its fulness and beauty’.93 Anglicans knew how to deal with music in a way they did not with the plastic arts.

91 Britten to WH, 22 March 1948, at D. Mitchell, P. Reed and M. Cooke, eds (2004) Letters from a Life. Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten: volume 3: 1946–51 (London: Faber), p. 388. 92 Britten to WH, 28 June 1962, and Britten to WH, 20 June 1969, both at MS Hussey 299. 93 Unidentifed local newspaper, 22 September 1943, cutting at MS Hussey 474. 72 P. Webster

There were, however, some premonitions of the rather different reception that Moore’s work was to receive. The correspondent of the Church Times noted that diocesan advisory committees (DAC), the bodies charged with approving works of plastic art in a way not required of new music ‘have yet to show how they will come through the ordeal of confrontation by works of genius or even surpassing mastery.’94 Although it was not, in fact, in the local DAC that the trouble arose for Hussey, the anticipation of diffculty was prescient. Although the work was the last to be realised, it seems that Moore was, in fact, the frst of his 1943–1944 commissionees of whom Hussey became aware. Moore had frst exhibited his ‘shelter drawings’, of Londoners sheltering in the tunnels of the Underground in May 1941, alongside work by members of the war artists scheme chaired by Kenneth Clark. Moore’s works at the National Gallery were, in the words of the Sunday Times critic Eric Newton, ‘unearthly studies of a white, grub-like race of troglodytes swathed in protective blankets in underground shelters’.95 For Moore, they represented a return to fgurative work after a long period of preoccupation with the abstract; a turn in a direction which suited Hussey. Newton later wrote of Hussey’s ‘very penetrating eye’; it might have seemed that Moore was ‘the last sculptor likely to produce a satisfactory religious carving.’96 At some point in 1942, Hussey saw the drawings at the National Gallery, and found that they made the works around them seem dull. Here was the sort of artist who ought to be creating art for the church, he thought: ‘his work has the dignity and force that is desperately needed today.’97 The drawings, he later recalled, had ‘seemed to possess a spiritual quality and a deep humanity as well as being monu- mental and suggestive of timelessness. Those are some of the qualities that one wished to fnd in a Madonna and Child.’98 It was in conversation with Harold Williamson, principal of the Chelsea School of Art,

94 ‘The Passing Week’, Church Times, 17 September 1943. 95 Sunday Times, 18 May 1941, as cited by R. Berthoud (2003) The life of Henry Moore 2nd edn. (London: de la Mare), p. 197. 96 E. Newton (1945) ‘Art and the Church today’, London Calling. The overseas journal of the BBC, 283 (March), p. 12. 97 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 23. 98 W. Hussey (1946) ‘The Church and the Artist. An association too long neglected’, The Churchman, 15 June, p. 9. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 73 that Hussey had become so enthused. The College had been evacuated to Northampton in the summer of 1940, and Hussey shared with Williamson an enthusiasm for the piano works of Beethoven.99 Moore had been one of Williamson’s staff at Chelsea, and was, by coincidence, coming to Northampton the following week to give a composition criticism. Williamson liked Hussey’s idea, but was apprehensive about the reaction both of the Diocesan Advisory Committee and the Parochial Church Council (PCC), should the venture come off.100 Importantly, however, he thought that Moore would not be too expensive to engage, so a meeting was arranged.101 Over supper in a blacked-out Angel Hotel in Northampton, probably in September, Hussey asked Moore, to whom Williamson had earlier shown the church, whether he would consider a commission. Even at this stage, it seems that the subject of Mary and the child Jesus was already in view, although it is not clear with whom it originated. Moore was interested, and sympathetic with the subject, but could not yet commit himself to producing something without much thought and making of sketches. Hussey, in turn, did not yet have in hand the kind of money for which Moore would ask, but was confdent it could be found. With this, Moore agreed to take some time to consider the idea.102 Moore’s reluctance to commit himself was doubtless due in part to a wish to be certain of producing something with which he could be satisfed. However, there was more to his hesitation than this. Born in a working-class home in Castleford, West Yorkshire, he had not inherited the Anglicanism that was socially necessary to the middle class, as Britten had, beyond baptism in the Church of England as an infant. Sunday School in the Congregational church made little impression on him, and a brief spate of churchgoing around the time of his confrmation in the Church of England did not survive long, and certainly not beyond his time in the trenches during the First World War. However, as with Britten, there was an aesthetic engagement with churches as places. Taken as a schoolboy to visit medieval churches by his headmaster, Moore learned, in the words of his biographer, that ‘sculpture by fne English craftsmen

99 Williamson to WH, 2 January 1942, at MS Hussey 353. 100 Williamson to WH, 23 September 1942, at MS Hussey 353. 101 Berthoud, Henry Moore, pp. 112, 189; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 23. 102 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 24. 74 P. Webster abounds in churches and other public places, if only we have eyes to see it.’103 Visiting Chichester Cathedral as a student in the early 1920s, Moore was much taken with the two Romanesque reliefs in the south quire aisle. These were, he recalled much later, ‘just what I wanted to emulate in sculpture’, from a period when ‘sculpture and architecture had such complete unity and religious sincerity.’ They were one of the two ‘fnest and most complete works of Romanesque art in England’.104 The sympathy between Moore and Hussey was aided by the fact that Moore held a view of the relationship between religion and art that was very close to Hussey’s own, but expressed from outside the community of faith rather than from within. Interviewed in 1964, he argued that ‘art in itself is akin to religion… another expression of the belief that life is worth living—and that is what religion is basically about. I go further and say that artists do not need religion for art is religion in itself. If one believes that life is signifcant… then one is religious in one’s art.’105 Moore also read the recent history of Christian art much as Hussey did: ‘the general level of church art has fallen very low (as anyone can see from the affected and sentimental prettinesses sold for church decoration in church art shops).’106 This had not always been the case, but ‘in the last two hundred years the Church has gradually abandoned the good artists in favour of those who have been taught to produce religious art for its own sake.’107 As a result, Moore was hesitant about accept- ing the commission, as he was by no means sure how a Madonna and Child could or should be done, in the 1940s.108 Moore later doubted ‘if I would ever have attempted a religious subject had it not been for the continuous pressure and encouragement from Canon Hussey.’109 In the early stages, the correspondence with Moore shows that Hussey had a clear sense that such a venture would require signifcant

103 Berthoud, Henry Moore, pp. 14, 10, 18. 104 H. Moore (1975) ‘The Romanesque carvings’ in W. Hussey (ed.) Chichester 900 (Chichester: Chichester Cathedral), p. 11. 105 A. Wilkinson (ed.) (2002) Henry Moore. Writings and Conversations (Aldershot: Lund Humphries), pp. 129–130. 106 Wilkinson, Henry Moore, p. 267. 107 Henry Moore interviewed by John Hedgecoe in 1968, as given at Wilkinson, Henry Moore, p. 130. 108 Moore to WH, 26 August 1943, as quoted at Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 32. 109 J. Hedgecoe (1968) Henry Spencer Moore (London: Nelson), p. 159. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 75 diplomatic skill if it was not to be derailed. One of the key sensitivities was that of funding. An objection regularly raised, particularly in wartime, was to the use of scarce resources on artistic ‘luxury work.’ The Moore sculpture for Northampton was to be funded entirely by an anonymous donor (in fact, Rowden Hussey, Hussey’s father), and thus the scheme was presented to the PCC as a gift that made no call on parish funds.110 After the success of the 1943 festival, Hussey was to set up a fund for donations towards further commissions, thereby very clearly marking this funding out from normal parochial expenses. Hussey also was prescient enough to foresee adverse reactions to the work because of its style. ‘I feel’, he wrote to Moore, ‘that the crucial stage would be the reaction of the Church Council to the models. I would willingly fght with the Diocesan and faculty authorities (though I do not think it would be necessary!); but I should be loath to try to force through anything which the simple folk who use the church & who are represented by the Council, really felt offended their religious susceptibilities. Something “not exactly what they would have chosen”, or which they could not quite understand, I do not think would matter, because they would be willing, with encouragement, I feel sure, to accept it, and wait for its beauty to grow on them in the future.’111 Hussey was subsequently to take especial care to provide just this encouragement. Still keen, it seems that Hussey wrote to remind Moore of the idea around the beginning of March 1943. Moore was just beginning to make sketches, he reported, which by the end of June had become a set of clay models. On the basis of these, Moore would be able to decide whether or not he had produced an idea that was worthy of the subject. In this task, he had the help of a fgure that will reappear in Hussey’s story many times: Kenneth Clark, whose relationship with Hussey is examined at length in Chap. 5. Clark, an established supporter and patron of Moore, apparently shared his concerns about how diffcult the subject was to treat, and had offered to help choose the right model.112

110 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 24. 111 Draft letter from WH to Moore, undated, probably December 1942, at MS Hussey 328. 112 Moore to WH, 29 March 1943, and 23 June 1943, both at MS Hussey 328. 76 P. Webster

It was in Clark’s room at the National Gallery that Hussey frst saw the models on 23 July, in the company of Moore, Clark, and Jasper Ridley, the chairman of the trustees of the Tate Gallery. There were fve models in all, any of which Moore was prepared to take to completion. ‘It is the most exciting sight I have even seen’, Hussey remembered Clark saying, as he paced up and down the room. ‘He has thought the whole thing out afresh and very deeply. It is a Madonna and Child you have got there, not just a Mother and Child’. The group agreed on one of the models, and Hussey and Moore agreed on a material—brown Hornton stone—and a price of no more than £350 for what would be 6 weeks’ work.113 (Later, in 1949, Moore was to carve another Madonna and Child using one of the other models, commissioned by Jasper Ridley for the church of Claydon in Suffolk.) Hussey brought the models home to Northampton, and Rowden Hussey agreed with the choice made; the next step was the PCC. Hussey had gathered together a weight of expert testimony which would have been diffcult to resist. Kenneth Clark wrote in favour of the ‘greatest living sculptor’ and what promised to be one of his fnest works.114 Hussey also had, in hand, a letter from Eric Newton, the critic, and another from George Bell, the only bishop Hussey could think of to ask: ‘I do not think you could go wrong in commissioning him’, wrote Bell. ‘How one longs for churches to give a lead in the revival of that association of religion and art which has meant so much to the whole religious and spiritual life of the country. If you were able to do this at St Matthew’s in the way proposed, you will be giving a lead which will in my judgment be of great value.’115 Faced with such a combination of hyperbole and implied fattery from men of such stature, the Council members swallowed whatever misgivings they might have had, and unanimously agreed with the choice of fgure. There was another hurdle to be cleared, a body rather less suscepti- ble to the pressure of eminent men than the Parochial Church Council. Although the sculpture was moveable, at least in theory, and so not

113 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 28–29. 114 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 30. 115 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 30–31. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 77 strictly a change to the fabric of the church, Hussey nonetheless sought the permission of the diocesan committee for the care of churches, which had to approve such alterations. Perhaps rather nervous, Hussey seems to have persuaded Kenneth Clark to write to the diocesan chancellor in his support.116 Hussey got his faculty, but not without a qualifcation. Whatever the committee and the chancellor thought of Moore’s style, there was some concern that (in a very well-known Anglo-Catholic parish) the statue might become the object of veneration, as statues of Mary were in Roman Catholic churches.117 Hussey was evidently incensed at the very suggestion, and wrote stressing his loyalty to the policy of the Church. This was not in doubt, but the chancellor still wanted to reserve the right to have it removed should concerns be raised in the future, not because he thought it at all likely, but so that a precedent should not be set. This was achieved by an agreement with John Rowden Hussey that the donation should, in fact, be a permanent loan with the condition that, should such an eventuality occur, the statue would be given instead to the National Gallery. At the time of writing, the statue remains in St Matthew’s (Image 3.4).118 At this point, the aim was still to have a fnished statue in place for St Matthew’s Day 1943, but it was not to be. Moore wrote to the quarry in July, but the stone did not arrive at Moore’s workshop until the middle of September, from which point he reckoned another 2 months would be needed.119 Although Moore was invited to the St Matthew’s Day service to hear the Britten premiere, he thought it better to carry on working. In late October, Hussey drove to see the statue in progress, and chipped off some small pieces himself, which he was to treasure. By mid- November the statue was far enough progressed for Moore to be arranging transport to Northampton.120 The date for the unveiling was fnally fxed for 19 February 1944, some 6 months later than planned.

116 H. Savory (Deputy Diocesan Registrar) to WH, 3 August 1943, at MS Hussey 333. 117 Savory to WH, 28 August 1943, at MS Hussey 333. 118 Savory to WH, 27 August 1943, at MS Hussey 333. 119 Moore to WH, 30 July 1943 and 11 September 1943, both at MS Hussey 328. 120 Moore to WH, 19 September 1943, at MS Hussey 328; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 35; Moore to WH, 22 November 1943, at MS Hussey 328. 78 P. Webster

Image 3.4 Madonna and Child by Henry Moore, as viewed from the seats in the nave. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 334

Hussey gave an extended account of the unveiling, on a bitterly cold day. The railway line from London had been hit by a German bomb, meaning that Benjamin Britten could not reach Northampton in order to conduct his Rejoice in the Lamb as planned. The Moores, along with Graham and Kathleen Sutherland and Kenneth and Jane Clark, spent several cold hours in an unheated and stationary carriage. They arrived, hungry and very late, to fnd a full church, Hussey fretful, and 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 79 an impatient Claude Blagden, bishop of Peterborough, whom Hussey thought out of sympathy with the venture in any case. The order of service had been specially devised by Eric Milner White, dean of York and himself a patron of new music; Clark addressed the congregation, and Rowden Hussey presented the statue in person. In the congregation, amongst others in Hussey’s growing circle, was William Walton.121 The reactions to the Madonna, both in the frst days and weeks and subsequently, are worth dwelling on in depth as they brought to the surface some key assumptions often made about religious art. One of these was the idea that religious art, being designed for a particular purpose, should make different and indeed lesser demands on the viewer. The leading article in the Northampton Independent summed up the objection more fully: ‘If our churches are to be, primarily, temples of contemplation and meditation their enrichment with greatly arresting artistic focal objects is to be encouraged.’ However, the writer continued, this was not their only or indeed prime function, which was worship and instruction. Therefore ‘it would, indeed, seem that only simple art or, at least, readily comprehensible art is permissible in the interests of accepted ecclesiastical functionalism.’122 This, the writer thought, explained why church art had for the most part remained mediocre, and necessarily so. As an Anglican clergyman later observed, whatever future generations would make of works such as Moore’s, they ‘fnd far greater favour in artistic circles than with ordinary Churchmen, who are conservative in their religion and look for the familiar in church art and architecture.’123 Hussey, in keeping with his tactic of gently managing the expectations of his congregation, gave a sermon the Sunday before the unveiling in which he attempted to meet the point. Whilst carefully glossing and interpreting the work, he suggested that, if it was simply ‘what we expect’, then that in itself would render the piece worthless. It would be ‘unworthy of its place in the church, because it would only be what you and I could already imagine, and in that case, we had better do without the statue and simply use our own imagination.’ The statue would

121 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 39–43. 122 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 45. 123 G. Sansbury (1954) ‘The Church and modern art [letter to the editor]’, The Times, 24 May 1954, p. 7. 80 P. Webster therefore only be a success if all in the congregation were to ‘approach humbly, putting aside preconceived ideas and expectations’ and making the piece ‘as it was for its author, the focus and stimulus for six months’ hard thinking on the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary.’124 Where Hussey was gentle, Clark in his address at the unveiling was uncompromising. The idea that church art should be immediately comprehensible to all was a ‘fallacy’. All of the fundamentals of the faith— Trinity, Incarnation and Redemption—were deeply mysterious, matters with which the greatest minds of Christendom had wrestled. It was necessary, said Clark, to approach works of art in the spirit of St Anselm: believing in order to understand. So it was inevitable that the Moore ‘may worry some simple people, it may raise indignation in the minds of self-centred people, and it may lead arrogant people to protest.’125 Moore’s biographer has suggested persuasively that the adoption by a correspondent of the local paper of the pseudonym ‘Simplicitas’ can be attributed to Clark’s combative turn of phrase.126 Whether from arrogant people or not, there were indeed protests. Letters to the local Northampton Chronicle and Echo described the statue as an ‘an insult to every woman [and] a grave insult to the one it is sup- posed to represent’, a ‘monstrosity’, ‘grotesque’. Some of this objection, which was typical of the reaction in the local press, was an objection to Moore’s style. But the larger objection was to the gap between Moore’s work and expectations of how Mary, the mother of Christ, should look; the sculpture ‘warps a mental picture of an ideal which has remained unchanged for 2000 years’.127 While incorrect as a reading of art history, the diffculty was acknowledged by at least some critics. Conscious of the objection, Hussey met it directly in his sermon. While most people had some acquaintance with the greatest music by means of radio broadcasting, he argued, most people would be hard put to visualise a single

124 Sermon, privately printed, copy at MS Hussey 335. 125 Printed in the St Matthew’s Magazine and reprinted privately for the church. Copy at MS Hussey 335. 126 Berthoud, Henry Moore, p. 215. 127 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 44–45. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 81 work even of Michelangelo. Most contemporary religious statues were ‘not sculpture at all, but sentimental plaster-work, corresponding in the realm of music to the religious ballads of the end of the last century’. If The Lost Chord was the only music one knew, Bach’s Mass in B minor would certainly seem ‘strange and diffcult’.128 ‘To-day no-one knows quite what the Madonna of the twentieth century should be’, wrote Eric Newton, the most sympathetic of critics to what Hussey was trying to achieve. ‘She disappeared at the end of the seventeenth century and was replaced in the nineteenth by a mass-produced plaster dummy. Now that Henry Moore has brought her back to life we are puzzled by the trans- formation she has undergone from the Michelangelesque athletic god- dess. She had returned with some of the clumsy dignity of the peasant and some of the inscrutable grandeur of the sphinx.’129 Hussey told the American Newsweek magazine that ‘some of the warmest admirers of the statue have been simple, ordinary working men who do not pretend to know anything about “art”…The widespread local discussion…has made thousands of people come and see the statue, and many more thousands discuss it and necessarily its subject, the incarnation.’130 The local discussion was certainly intense. Hussey’s father was stopped in the street by a woman not previously known to him in order to let him know how disgusted she was.131 However, the reaction was more mixed than the press coverage might suggest. One of Hussey’s clergy colleagues in Northampton, though he disliked the Madonna intensely, nonetheless congratulated Hussey on the initiative.132 The wife of a Congregational minister from outside the town had come to see the statue after being alerted to it by a broadcast speech by Sir Alfred Munnings, president of the Royal Academy, and found herself deeply impressed.133 In 1947, a visiting reporter met a waitress in a nearby cafe

128 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 38. 129 E. Newton (1944) ‘Henry Moore’s Madonna and Child’, Architectural Review, (May), p. 190. 130 Newsweek, 18 December 1944: typescript at MS Hussey 333. 131 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 48. 132 William Denny, vicar of St Edmund’s Northampton, to WH, 26 February 1944, at MS Hussey 333. 133 Edith Richards to WH, 12 October 1949, at MS Hussey 333. 82 P. Webster

Image 3.5 The Madonna and Child by Henry Moore, probably 1944. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 334 who would go almost every week to see the statue.134 Moore came to hear of a mother and father who regularly came to Northampton to visit their daughter in residential care, and each time would seek out the sculpture for ‘reassurance and tranquillity’.135 Away from the noise of the media, it would seem that the people of Northampton and elsewhere came to their own terms with Moore’s work (Image 3.5).

134 I. Maclean, (1947) ‘St. Matthew’s, Northampton, the church with a challenge’, Art Notes, 11:3, 40–44. 135 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 48. 3 THE 1943 JUBILEE FESTIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON 83

After the initial excitement, critics began to grapple with the extent to which Moore had produced a work of specifcally religious art, and (by implication) how such a thing might be defned, and indeed if it were possible at all. Writing in 1965, Herbert Read, a consistent advocate of Moore, thought the only quality that might specifcally be religious in meaning was ‘what is sometimes called numinosity, by which we mean mystical or transcendental values that are suggested but not defned—the beauty of holiness, to use a Biblical phrase.’ However, it was impossible to make a distinction between ‘the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty. Beauty, embodied in a work of art, is a transcendental value, as many mystics and theologians have been prepared to admit.’136 Read recognised the question of what made religious art, but concluded that there could be no useful answer. Geoffrey Grigson, identifying himself as a ‘pagan’, came to a different view than Read. The sculpture was ‘moving and lovely and masterly’; he had seen no other work from Moore ‘in which all the abstract virtues are more imaginatively combined with the meaning of a great subject.’ But Moore’s lack of clear Christian belief had, in the fnal analysis, left something lacking. ‘There is an ineluctable difference’, wrote Grigson, ‘between a piece of sculpture which emerges from feeling and tenderness and one which emerges from feeling, tenderness and belief [my italics]; and I am uneasy because I cannot see Henry Moore’s belief… going out, with full strength, now, into a Madonna and Child’. Moore had, no doubt, far surpassed a Madonna by ‘any academic sculptor who has a habit of church-going’, but ultimately Grigson’s argument—had it been pushed to its conclusion—was that truly religious art was impossible without belief.137 Hussey read the piece, and felt moved to write to explain the commissioning process, and to counter any suggestion that a ‘conventional heresy hunt amongst conscientious artists working for the Church’ would be anything other than counter-productive. But Hussey ultimately missed Grigson’s more substantive point; his view was too close to that of Read.138

136 H. Read (1965) Henry Moore. A study of his life and work (London: Thames and Hudson) p. 156. 137 G. Grigson (1944) ‘Henry Moore’s Madonna and Child’, Architectural Review (May), p. 189. 138 W. Hussey (1944) ‘Letter to the Editor’, Architectural Review (July), p. 1. 84 P. Webster

Grigson’s view, a passing comment in a short piece, was echoed, made more precise and sharpened considerably in 1948 by David Sylvester, one of Moore’s most perceptive critics. Many Christians assented to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, but increasingly in intellect alone, he argued; few had any longer the ‘overwhelming conviction required to give it artistic expression.’ As Hussey might himself have argued, it was by no means necessary for an artist to himself be a believer to make Christian art, but ‘the non-believer can create as if he believed only when he belongs to a society of believers whose faith so suffuses the Zeitgeist than he can achieve not merely a suspension of disbelief but a positive identifcation with the feelings of those who do believe.’ Moore had not—could not—have it in him fully to identify with the necessary, specifcally Christian emotion, he thought.139 Although Sylvester did not spell the point out, the implication was clear: in a secularising society, all attempts by churches to obtain Christian art from those who did not believe were doomed to fail. It is not clear whether Hussey ever saw Sylvester’s article, but if he had, he could scarcely have accepted its implications. By the spring of 1944, he had obtained all fve parts of his programme for the Jubilee festival, two of which he was convinced were triumphs in new church patronage of the arts. Amidst the noise, the expert voices that he respected were telling him that he had begun something important, and that he should continue. Chapter 4 describes that continuation, with more visual art, some words, and a great deal more music.

139 D. Sylvester (1948) ‘The evolution of Henry Moore’s sculpture: II’, The Burlington Magazine 90, no. 544 (July 1948), pp. 189–195, at p. 190. CHAPTER 4

Music, Art and Poetry: 1944–1955

Although it took nearly 6 months to complete, Hussey achieved the fve things he set out to achieve for the 1943 Festival. What next, in his quest to bring church and artist closer together? This chapter examines Hussey’s commissions from 1944 until his departure for Chichester in 1955, among which there were several pieces of music, two pieces of poetry and a single work of visual art. Hussey’s modus operandi was the same as had yielded fruit in 1943, and it continued to centre on St Matthew’s Day.

Edmund Rubbra Unfortunately, Hussey’s papers are almost silent on the genesis of his next commission, the motet The Revival by Edmund Rubbra, frst performed in 1944. Rubbra had not been the frst choice, which was Alan Rawsthorne. The latter was in his early forties and well established as a composer of orchestral and instrumental work, but with without a profle in religious music (then or indeed since). Rawsthorne had frst agreed to write for St Matthew’s only to withdraw with only weeks to spare.1 Quite unlike Britten or Tippett, Rubbra had no diffculty in articulat- ing a Christian faith of his own. Although his particular journey was to culminate in 1948 with his reception into the Roman Catholic church,

1 WH to Leslie Boosey, 9 October 1944, at MS Hussey 342.

© The Author(s) 2017 85 P. Webster, Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain, Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-36910-9_4 86 P. Webster his later memoir recalled ‘a sort of diffused Christianity that I had always believed in’.2 Signifcantly, there was also a Northampton connection. Rubbra had been born in the town in 1901, and although his family background was in the Congregational Church, he had attended Kettering Road Junior School, not far from St Matthew’s. His piano teacher when a teenager had been ‘a celebrated Northampton organist, Charles J. King’, organist of St Matthew’s, and there had been organ tuition from King as well, almost certainly on the St Matthew’s instrument.3 As was the case with Britten, Rubbra was better known for his orchestral work, having completed the fourth of his eleven symphonies in 1941. Amongst Rubbra’s very early works is a carol for unaccompanied choir (Dormi Jesu, 1924), and also a set of fve settings of the English metaphysical poets—Herrick, Donne, Crashaw and two texts by Henry Vaughan—from 1934. Other than these, however, there was little suitable music for Anglican use, and Hussey may once again have seen an established fgure, although not yet too expensive, whom it might be possible to draw towards writing for the Church of England. Rubbra’s motet for Northampton was among the very frst parts of what was to be a small, but signifcant, contribution to Anglican sacred music, including the Magnifcat and Nunc Dimittis in A fat (1948), which remains very much part of the cathedral repertoire. Hussey’s own account suggests that he had met Rubbra while the latter was in the Royal Artillery and stationed in Northampton, travelling around the area giving recital performances. At some point, Hussey and Rubbra travelled together in a lorry to such a recital, and Rubbra agreed to write for St Matthew’s.4 The text was ‘The Revival’ by Henry Vaughan. It is not clear whose choice the text was, but Rubbra’s mind was already actively engaged with Vaughan, having been making sketches since 1941 for the work that was to become The Morning Watch (1946).5

2 Leo Black (2008) Edmund Rubbra. Symphonist (Woodbridge: Boydell), p. 110. 3 Black, Rubbra, pp.18, 22, 27; M. Nicholas (1968) Muse at St Matthew’s (Northampton: St Matthew’s Church), p. 8. 4 W. Hussey (1985) Patron of Art (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), p. 93. 5 Black, Rubbra, p. 84. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 87

The Revival was frst performed on the morning of St Matthew’s Day, 21 September 1944, during the Eucharist. The service opened with a performance of Salvum fac populum tuo by Widor, for brass and organ, played by the Band of the Northamptonshire Regiment, which had played Tippett’s fanfare the year before.6 A piece in the grand proces- sional manner, at some six or seven minutes in performance, it dwarfs Tippett’s piece in scale, and was perhaps chosen to balance the miniature character of Rubbra’s anthem. (Rubbra had at one point suggested that it be sung twice, since it was so short.)7 Rubbra directed the performance of the anthem himself, in army uniform, having been accommodated by Hussey in the vicarage, along with Rubbra’s wife, during which stay they listened to a radio performance by Yehudi Menuhin of the recently composed second violin concerto by Bartok.8 Britten and Pears gave a recital the same afternoon with the cellist Norina Semino, during which the choir performed Rejoice in the Lamb under Britten’s direction.9 Hussey’s own view of The Revival may be gauged by his later use of it. It was the one piece of music (out of the four commissions up to that date) that was included in a BBC radio programme on ‘The Eye of the Artist’, which Hussey recorded at Alexandra Palace in London in March 1948, and also in a radio broadcast of a service from St Matthew’s in October of the same year.10 Once in Chichester, it was also the only piece of music Hussey chose for the ceremony to unveil Graham Sutherland’s Noli me tangere in 1961.11

Lennox Berkeley Late in 1944, Hussey was planning both for the 1945 Festival and for the commission of Graham Sutherland, which was to be completed in 1946 (to which this chapter shall return). Hussey was to turn to a

6 Nicholas, Muse, p. 9. 7 Rubbra to WH, 15 September 1944, at MS Hussey 342. 8 Nicholas, Muse at St Matthews, p. 8; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 94. 9 Nicholas, Muse at St Matthews, p. 9; printed leafet with schedule, at MS Hussey 121. 10 Typescript script at MS Hussey 205; typescript running order at MS Hussey 206. 11 Order of service at MS Hussey 173. 88 P. Webster composer recommended to him by Britten.12 Lennox Berkeley was born in 1903 and was, by 1945, well established as a composer although, like Britten and Rubbra, not for his production of liturgical music. The sali- ent fact about Berkeley was his Roman Catholicism, adopted in 1928 when studying composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Later commentators, including Berkeley’s son, the composer Michael Berkeley, have located Berkeley’s key inspiration in sacred texts: ‘the sacred went straight to his heart and the music came straight back out again.’ John Tavener, a Berkeley pupil, thought that Berkeley’s religious music was his best.13 Although in later years, Berkeley produced a considerable body of liturgical music proper, including his Mass for the choir of Westminster Cathedral (1964), there was in 1945 little such music except for a setting of words from Richard Crashaw, Lord, when the sense of Thy sweet grace, which had been written in 1944. His oratorio Jonah was a large-scale work for the concert hall, broadcast by the BBC in 1936. Domini in terra, also for chorus and orchestra, but rather smaller in scale, was fnished the following year. Once again, as with Britten and Rubbra, Hussey looked to an established fgure without a track record specifcally in liturgical music. Britten had evidently told Berkeley of the sympathetic atmosphere he had found while working for Northampton, and he knew already of the Henry Moore sculpture. But Berkeley was also at that time doing offce work in order to make a living, and so would not be able to start work until early in 1945.14 By May, Berkeley had settled on a text, ‘The Flower’ by George Herbert—another metaphysical poet—part of which he had already set, and was asking whether the Northampton choir had a good solo boy soprano for whom to write. Hussey evidently thought that ‘The Flower’ presented some diffculties, at least as a whole poem—the reasons why are not clear—and Berkeley, eager to please, asked for suggestions of other texts with which to combine the work he had already done.15 By June, Berkeley had settled on one verse of the Herbert poem, combined with part of ‘Easter Hymn’ by Herbert’s

12 Britten to Hussey, 8 December 1944, at MS Hussey 297. 13 P. Dickinson (2003) The Music of Lennox Berkeley (Woodbridge: Boydell), p. 101. 14 Berkeley to Hussey, 25 December 1944, at MS Hussey 291. 15 Berkeley to Hussey, 19 May 1945, at MS Hussey 291; Berkeley to Hussey, 24 May 1945, at MS Hussey 291. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 89 contemporary Henry Vaughan, and the Latin sequence ‘Jerusalem et Sion fliae’ in an English translation.16 At some 11–12 minutes in performance, the Festival Anthem is much more substantial than the Rubbra, and rather closer to Rejoice in the Lamb. The Berkeley scholar Peter Dickinson has pointed out the place of the Festival Anthem in an ongoing stylistic dialogue between Britten and Berkeley, most evident in the central section from Herbert. However, Berkeley’s anthem now seems both more conventional and less successful than Britten’s. Whilst Britten’s musical idiom was quite outside the run of contemporary church music, Berkeley’s is rather nearer the mainstream, combining the French tradition of Gounod and Franck with a more contemporary asperity in its harmonic writing.17 It reinstates an obliqueness of address to the hearer, a greater reserve, that Britten’s directness had avoided. The Festival Anthem also stands as an example of the dangers of interventionist patronage. Berkeley’s mind was already engaged with Herbert’s text, and the central section that sets it (‘O that I once past changing were’) is evidently the heart of the work. However, the sequence that precedes it, and the setting of Vaughan that follows it, are (to this listener, at least) barely connected with it, and the anthem has the feeling of three independent musical ideas uneasily joined. The three texts lack the thematic coherence that Britten created in Rejoice in the Lamb, and a disjointed, episodic piece is the result. It is perhaps telling that, writing to Hussey two years later, Berkeley singled out the treble solo (that is, the central section) as the best thing he had written.18 Berkeley subsequently rescued the Herbert setting from its entrapment in this anthem to create a version for cello and piano, published in 1955, and the organist Jennifer Bate subsequently made an organ arrangement of the same.19 It is idle to speculate what might have emerged had Hussey allowed Berkeley to continue with Herbert’s poem alone; the piece that emerged has the character of an idea interrupted. By September, with the work written and with the printers, Hussey showed his inexperience with the processes of commissioning new music.

16 Berkeley to WH, 24 June 1945, at MS Hussey 291. 17 Dickinson, Music of Lennox Berkeley, pp. 93–96. 18 Berkeley to Hussey, 24 September 1947, at MS Hussey 291. 19 Dickinson, Music of Lennox Berkeley, p. 93. 90 P. Webster

Just a fortnight before St Matthew’s Day, there was a minor crisis over who should cover the cost of the choir copies of the anthem. Berkeley, following usual practice, had understood that he was receiving a fee simply for writing a piece of music; Hussey, on the other hand, had apparently assumed that the fee included a set of copies. Berkeley, not wishing to leave the matter with any grievance, offered to cover the costs if all else failed, although he would struggle to afford it.20 Some compromise was apparently reached in time, however, and the Festival Anthem was frst performed during the festival service on St Matthew’s Day, Friday 21st September 1945, and again the following Sunday at evensong. Berkeley came to Northampton for the performance. Grateful to Hussey for his confdence in making the commission, and for his personal kindness and understanding, he was also very glad of the opportunity to see the Moore Madonna. Berkeley had seen a good deal of Moore’s work, and had known about the Madonna before, but on seeing it now thought it a masterpiece. He thought the performance of the anthem a successful one, and W.K. Stanton of the BBC agreed.21 The work was broadcast by the BBC on 27 November 1946, with Berkeley conducting the choir of St Matthew’s accompanied by Alec Wyton, newly appointed as Hussey’s organist.22

Gerald Finzi If the decisions made by Hussey as author of Patron of Art are a refection of his estimation of the worth of his commissions, his judgment was surely wrong in the case of the anthem Lo, the full fnal sacrifce, by Gerald Finzi. Patron of Art gives fully eight pages to a recital by Kirsten Flagstad (examined below), and half a page to the seemingly minor matter of print designs for Chichester. For Finzi, however, there is half a sen- tence, for a piece of music the frst page of which has been described by one of Finzi’s foremost interpreters as the ‘best thing Finzi ever wrote’.23 Of all the Hussey music for Northampton, it is Lo, the full fnal sacrifce

20 Berkeley to Hussey, 6 September 1945, at MS Hussey 291. 21 Berkeley to Hussey, 23 September 1945, at MS Hussey 291. 22 Radio Times 1208, 22 November 1946, p. 20. 23 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp.14–22, 130, 96; S. Banfeld (1997) Gerald Finzi. An English Composer (London, Faber and Faber), p. 330. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 91 that has entered the repertoire, along with Rejoice in the Lamb. Hussey was usually fulsome in his thanks after a frst performance or an unveiling—politeness demanded it—and this was no exception. However, there is a clue as to the possible reason for Hussey’s later downplaying of the piece from Finzi himself, who had the impression that Hussey disliked it after playing the piece through at the piano. Finzi admitted that the piece ‘isn’t like Britten, for whom Hussey has a great, great admiration.’24 In June 1946, and in something of a hurry, Hussey approached Finzi to compose something for Northampton’s festival that September, as part of the effort to ‘to help re-forge the ancient link between the Church and the Arts’. It would seem that Hussey had not given up on Alan Rawsthorne despite being let down in 1944, but had been disappointed a second time.25 As with all Hussey’s commissionees so far, Finzi was better known in other genres than choral music for the liturgy, although there were three settings of Thomas Traherne and Henry Vaughan, dating from between 1922 and 1925.26 Although it is not clear whether Hussey was aware of them, some of Finzi’s fnest writing for voices was already evident in the Seven Partsongs (1934–1937) on texts by Robert Bridges. Hussey was perhaps more likely to have heard Dies natalis, for solo voices and string orchestra on a text by Traherne, written for the Three Choirs Festival in 1939, but premiered instead in London when the festival was cancelled due to the outbreak of war.27 The reputation of Northampton was by this point such that Finzi was already aware of its ‘remarkable parson’, and liked the idea, but was concerned about the shortness of time.28 Finzi was clearly impressed by Hussey’s record up to that point, although not with each individual work. Finzi had for some time been immune to Britten’s music,

24 Finzi to Robin Milford, 9 September 1946, as quoted by Banfeld, Finzi, p. 331. 25 WH to Finzi, 6 June 1946, as quoted by Banfeld, Finzi, p. 326. 26 Up to those bright and gladsome hills (Vaughan, 1922); The brightness of this day (Vaughan, 1923); The recovery (Traherne, 1925). 27 Banfeld, Finzi, p. 256. 28 Finzi to WH, 9 June 1946, at MS Hussey 319; Banfeld, Finzi, p. 326. 92 P. Webster thinking much of it ‘derelict and dead’, all brilliant effect with no substance.29 The other pieces for Northampton had been ‘a decent motet’ by Rubbra, but ‘an awful thing of Berkeley’s (rather like a still-born turd)’.30 Hussey had suggested a piece for St Matthew’s Day, but also possibly something on the Eucharist, as none of the St Matthew’s compositions had been so far, and it was, once again, to the metaphysical poets that his thoughts had turned. Finzi’s private library of English literature was very extensive (it was later donated to Reading University, where it remains in the Finzi Book Room.) From it, the texts for his extensive output of songs from the 1920s and 1930s had been drawn: settings of the verse of Thomas Hardy and other modern poets, but also Thomas Traherne, John Milton, and Shakespeare. George Herbert and Henry Vaughan were among the poets who were discussed and discarded. Also toyed with, but rejected, was the idea of a medieval Latin hymn. Finally, by July, Finzi had settled on two poems by Richard Crashaw, another metaphysical poet, that form the fnal text, and sent Hussey typescripts of the two, with annotations suggesting his reordering of the text to form a satisfying whole.31 By mid-August, Finzi described the piece as nine-tenths done, and sent Hussey the fnal versions of the text. It was designed to be usable as both a Eucharistic piece and a general anthem, and Finzi suggested that the central section could be omitted as necessary. The piece went to Gloucester for Finzi’s friend, the organist Herbert Sumsion, to check over the organ part. In mid-September Hussey declared himself and the choir happy with the work, as was Finzi with the fee of £15 15s.32 It was premiered on St Matthew’s Day with Finzi and his wife present, accompanied by Rubbra and Anthony Scott, a friend of Finzi. At lunch, Scott noted the Finzis ‘sitting so good and well behaved one on either side of the bishop’.33 It received a second performance in November at the unveiling of Sutherland’s Crucifxion, and was programmed at the following year’s Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester.

29 D. McVeagh (2005) Gerald Finzi. His life and music (Woodbridge: Boydell), p. 145. 30 Finzi to Anthony Scott, July 1946, as quoted by McVeagh, Finzi, p. 147. 31 Finzi to WH, 9 June 1946, 18 June 1946, and 4 July 1946, all at MS Hussey 319. 32 Finzi to WH, 18 August 1946, and 18 September 1946, both at MS Hussey 319. 33 McVeagh, Finzi, p. 147. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 93

In Finzi’s own private impressions, there is a further clue to Hussey’s comparative neglect of the piece. Finzi was unable to profess any sort of Christian faith, although he was able to grasp and respect what it meant to others. Diana McVeagh has argued that Finzi was drawn not so much to the Christian meaning of the text as to the intensity of its language.34 It may have been that Hussey did not fnd in Finzi personally the kind of latent sympathy for Christianity that he thought he found in Britten and Moore, and certainly not the positive commitment of Rubbra: ‘What a curious spectacle’ Finzi thought, and ‘how like Anthony Trollope the secular side of it, and how like a pagan ceremony the religious side.’ All the ‘dressings up and goings on of all the various sects and communities… seem equally fantastic whether in Cairo or Northampton.’35 Although the correspondence is faultlessly polite, it is possible that some of the puzzlement that Finzi felt at Northampton communicated itself to Hussey.

Music, 1948–1955 By the end of 1946, Hussey had secured four commissions in as many years. The years from 1948 until his departure for Chichester were rather less spectacular, although some of the same themes persisted. One was the engagement with the metaphysical poets: it was again Henry Vaughan that was set by Christopher Headington for the commission for 1948. Hussey recalled that the introduction to Headington had come from Britten, and Headington was much later to write the authorised biography of Peter Pears.36 At the time, however, Headington, aged only 18, was studying composition with Lennox Berkeley, who evidently helped his student with the piece, and wrote to Hussey declaring himself pleased: the piece was not too taxing for the singers, and promised to be effective.37 It was frst performed in September 1948, and the piece so moved John Daly, bishop in the Gambia and visiting preacher that day, that ‘he found it quite diffcult to begin his sermon.’38 Despite this

34 McVeagh, Finzi, p. 148. 35 Letter to Anthony Scott, at Ibid., p. 147. 36 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 96. 37 Berkeley to WH, 21 August 1948, at MS Hussey 291. 38 St Matthew’s Parish Magazine, October 1948, p. 6; copy at MS Hussey 120. 94 P. Webster apparent success, the piece was never published, and Hussey’s memoir gave it only the barest mention.39 Both Patron of Art and the Hussey Papers are entirely silent on the commission for 1949, a Festive Hymn by John Rose. The South African composer was also a student, at Keble College, Oxford (Hussey’s own college), but little is known of the piece as the manuscript was lost.40 James Butt, composer of the anthem for 1954, was also apparently a recommendation from Britten, under whom Butt had studied composition. His Bless the Lord, O my soul also remained unpublished.41 The fourth composition in the post-1948 group was Laudate Dominum, a setting of Psalm 150, by Malcolm Arnold. Like Rubbra a native of Northampton, Arnold had some acquaintance with St Matthew’s since he had been a teenage trumpet soloist for the Northampton Bach Choir in 1937.42 (The Choir had been founded by Denys Pouncey, organist of St Matthew’s between 1934 and 1936.) It also seems that Hussey had stayed in touch with Adrian Boult after the 1943 broadcast, apparently meeting Boult several times in Bedford, where the BBC Midland Region was based. Boult was a regular conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, in which Arnold was principal trumpet, and so it is possible that the two met at some stage in connection with the orchestra.43 Hussey appears to have approached Arnold early in 1950, at which time Arnold was concentrating on composition after having given up professional trumpet playing. The choice of text was Arnold’s, and the anthem was frst performed in September, from copies published by Lengnick’s, who also agreed to allow Hussey to keep the fnal manuscript on a permanent loan.44 Michael Nicholas,

39 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 96. The work is also omitted from the list of his works in the New Grove Dictionary. 40 Nicholas, Muse at St Matthew’s, p. 14. 41 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 96; correspondence at MS Hussey 305; ‘Death of leading composer’, The Ipswich Star, 7 March 2003, retrieved from www.ipswichstar.co.uk on 22 September 2015. 42 M.C. Harrison (1993) The centenary history of St Matthew’s church and parish, Northampton (Edinburgh: Pentland), p. 111. 43 ‘Town Talk’, Northampton Chronicle and Echo, 16 June 1952; cutting at MS Hussey 460. 44 Letter from Arnold to Hussey, dated 28 March 1950, at MS Hussey 283. This dating must however be incorrect, as it refers to the frst performance in September. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 95 organist at St Matthew’s after Hussey’s departure, thought the piece one of the best of the 1950s crop, although with some unsuccessful writing for the organ. Along with Finzi, Butt and Headington, however, it mer- its only a single line in Patron of Art.45 The question may be asked why Hussey appeared to scale back his ambitions, just as St Matthew’s was coming to prominence as a commissioner of new music. It seems to have been the case that, after Moore and Sutherland (documented below), there were relatively few attempts to commission new works of visual art: the unsuccessful approach to the painter Matthew Smith in 1949 seems to have been one of few.46 In the case of music, Michael Nicholas suggested that it was a positive decision to engage specifcally with very young composers such as Headington or John Rose.47 However, the papers (to which Nicholas did not have access) suggest that Hussey, in fact, continued in his usual way but without the same success. In this light, Headington and the others appear as a reserve option, rather than the main intention. In 1949, Hussey had approached Maurice Durufé for either a choral or an organ piece. Although well established as a composer for the organ, Durufé’s frst major choral work, the Requiem, had only recently been published in Paris by Durand. Durufé professed himself fattered but too busy.48 In 1953, Hussey made a similar approach to the Swiss composer Frank Martin, who was too much occupied with the opera Der Sturm which was to be premiered in 1955.49 There was certainly one, and possibly two, approaches to the elderly Ralph Vaughan Williams, both declined.50 Most audaciously perhaps, Hussey tried twice to commission Igor Stravinsky, frst in 1950 and then again in 1953. Unusually, Hussey retained a copy of his own letter, in which he told the story of Moore and Sutherland, Britten and Tippett, and enclosed copies of the Britten and the W.H. Auden litany (discussed below). There were limited fnancial resources, he admitted, ‘but we do our utmost to let you have

45 Nicholas, Muse at St Matthew’s, p. 16; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 96. 46 Smith to WH, 10 January 1948, at MS Hussey 433. 47 Nicholas, Muse at St Matthew’s, p. 14. 48 Durufe to WH, 21 May 1949, at MS Hussey 314. 49 Martin to WH, 24 November 1953, at MS Hussey 327. 50 Vaughan Williams to WH, 1 February 1950, at MS Hussey 352; Vaughan Williams to WH, no date, at MS Hussey 484. 96 P. Webster whatever fee you felt appropriate.’ Stravinsky responded the second time, but to the same effect as Durufé and Martin.51 So it was that in four years, Hussey secured four new pieces of church music from composers without established reputations in the genre, all of whom were to go on to produce more such music, particularly in the case of Rubbra and Berkeley. In addition, two of the pieces, Rejoice in the Lamb and Lo, the full fnal sacrifce have established themselves very frmly in the choral repertoire. However, it would be a mistake to see Hussey as an entirely lone fgure in this particular enterprise. Rather he was one of a knot of clergy responding independently, but simultaneously, to the same need. Although both men were a half-generation older, the connection between Herbert Howells and Eric Milner-White, dean of King’s College, Cambridge, is a case in point. It was Milner- White who, at some point in 1941 or earlier, challenged Howells and the composer Patrick Hadley, for a reward of one guinea, to produce a new piece of church music. The work which Howells produced in response, a Te Deum, arguably proved more signifcant in the development of cathedral music than anything commissioned by Hussey. In the words of one Howells scholar, the Collegium Regale set of which the Te Deum was the frst installment in 1944, ‘kickstarted music for the Anglican church into a whole new phase of existence.’52 It is in connection with Rubbra and Tippett that Hussey’s story is also intertwined with that of the third most signifcant Anglican patron of new church music of the time: Joseph Weston Poole, precentor of Canterbury Cathedral, and later precentor of the new Coventry Cathedral. The point is moot as to which of the two men frst grasped the need for a re-engagement between the church and contemporary composers, but their frst steps in the enterprise were occurring at much the same time. Poole knew of Rejoice in the Lamb from the account in The Times of the premiere, and wrote to congratulate Hussey, having been both encouraged and challenged by Hussey’s example.53 However, by the end of the year, Poole had already successfully commissioned a piece from

51 WH to Stravinsky, 31 October 1950; Stravinsky to WH, 20 March 1953, both at MS Hussey 344. 52 P. Spicer (1998) Herbert Howells (Bridgend: Seren), pp. 130–131; C. Palmer (1996) Herbert Howells. A Celebration (2nd edition, London: Thames), p. 401. 53 Poole to Hussey, 23 September 1943, at MS Hussey 117. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 97

Tippett, the motet for double choir Plebs angelica, which was probably written in late 1943 and certainly complete by February 1944, although not frst performed until September of the same year.54 This had come about after Poole had heard Tippett’s second string quartet broadcast by the BBC at some point after its premiere in March 1943, and probably in advance of his knowledge of Hussey’s efforts.55 From Rubbra, Poole commissioned a full-scale setting of the communion service, the Missa Cantuariensis, the published edition of which, published by Lengnick, bears a dedication of 1945, although it was not frst performed until June 1946.56 Like the evening canticles in A fat, this too has remained part of the cathedral repertoire. To view Hussey alongside Poole and Milner- White is a healthy corrective to any myth of Hussey’s uniqueness, at least in relation to music; the case is stronger in relation to visual art.

Recitals Chapter 3 showed that, while St Matthew’s had a long-standing tradition of organ recitals that predated Hussey’s time, he widened the scope of recitals to include instrumental and vocal music in concert settings. Following on from the visit of the BBC Orchestra in 1943, performers at St Matthew’s included Britten and Pears, the soprano Joan Cross, the pianist Colin Horsley, and the Boyd Neel Orchestra. One visiting performer has a chapter of Patron of Art dedicated solely to her: the Norwegian operatic soprano Kirsten Flagstad. Why this should be is not explicable on the basis of the music she performed on her two visits to Northampton, in 1947 and 1948. A mixture of songs and arias—some on sacred themes and some not, from Schubert, Beethoven, Grieg and others—the two programmes were not thematically far from those given by Britten and Pears, and there seems to have been no objection from the congregation to the performance of ‘secular’ pieces in the church, even on hearing the ‘Liebestod’ aria from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

54 This is almost certainly the piece referred to by Tippett as ‘the Canterbury thing’ in a letter to Hussey of 9 February 1944, at MS Hussey 351. 55 I. Kemp (1987) Tippett. The composer and his music (Oxford: OUP), pp. 180, 490; M. Bowen (1981) Michael Tippett (London: Robson), p. 180. 56 Rubbra sent Hussey a complimentary copy in May 1946, and invited him to the London premiere at St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfeld, in June: Rubbra to Hussey, 21 May 1946, at MS Hussey 342. 98 P. Webster

The signifcance of the visits is in Hussey’s method in securing them, and the particular pleasure that they evidently gave him. Hussey had seen Flagstad in Tristan und Isolde at Covent Garden in 1936, and found it ‘overwhelming. The beauty of her voice throughout its range, the accuracy and the power, undimmed and unforced to the end of the evening, were thrilling.’ Soon after moving to Northampton, Hussey’s ‘wild dream’ was to persuade ‘one of the great voices of the century’ to sing at Northampton.57 While Britten and Moore were not yet at the height of their fame, Flagstad surely was, and was rarely in England. Undeterred, Hussey wrote, and Flagstad replied positively from the SS America, crossing the Atlantic in March 1946: she was to be in England in the spring of 1947 in any case.58 Her usual fee was 300 guineas, ten times Britten’s fee, but she would perform for chari- table causes for half that. Hussey undertook to pay her all the takings for tickets, and guaranteed 100 guineas. ‘Our aim’, Hussey explained to Flagstad’s agent, ‘is to present the fnest possible music, both in quality and performance, in the church; because I believe that great music can be an expression of man’s worship and offering to God, and also that it is, as all fne Art, something of deep spiritual value to man. So we are not primarily concerned with making a proft, but are quite satisfed if we manage to cover expenses.’59 Hussey asked the music critic of the Sunday Times, Desmond Shawe-Taylor, for advice on repertoire, which was forthcoming. Flagstad sang to a packed church at St Matthew’s on 2 July 1947, accompanied by Harold Craxton. At the end the audience, unaccustomed to applauding in a church building, responded to Flagstad’s bow by standing and bowing in response (Image 4.1).60 On the programme was the dramatic aria ‘Ozean du Ungeheuer’, from Weber’s opera Oberon. The means by which Flagstad came to sing the piece shows the persuasiveness of Hussey, which only just avoided crossing into undue pressure. The programme Shawe-Taylor had suggested, and to which Flagstad had added, Hussey thought rather

57 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 14–15. 58 Flagstad to WH, 13 March 1946, at MS Hussey 320. 59 Frederic Horwitz (Organisation Artistique Internationale, Paris) to WH, 9 May 1947, and Hussey’s draft reply, at MS Hussey 320. 60 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 19. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 99

Image 4.1 Hussey, Kirsten Flagstad and Harold Craxton outside St Matthew’s, probably 1947. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 320 underwhelming. As he later recalled, ‘I was determined that she should sing the things that made her let her hair down. Her singing of lieder was marvellous, but a bit like having the Queen Mary in your bath.’61 Hussey seems to have decided early on that Flagstad should sing the Weber aria, such that Alec Wyton was set to make an organ arrangement of the orchestral accompaniment, using a score from the local public library and Hussey’s copy of the recording Flagstad had made with the

61 B. Norman (1965) ‘The swinging Dean peps up the Psalms’, Daily Mail, 9 August 1965: cutting at MS Hussey 358. 100 P. Webster

Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. Flagstad was panicked by the suggestion during a telephone call, since it was some years since she had last sung the piece. Hussey withdrew, but renewed his assault after lunch at the vicarage by playing her the Philadelphia recording. Later, rehears- ing in the church, he and Wyton once again sprang the piece on her, at which she protested once again, but eventually was prevailed upon. Once Hussey had persuaded her to sing the piece just for him, further pressure seems to have induced her to include it in the recital. Even Hussey’s own recollection of the episode suggests that he acted in an overbearing way; Flagstad’s recollections are not recorded.62 She seems to have been readier to sing some Schubert Lieder in the vicarage for Hussey, Craxton and a small group of others after the performance. During her visit, Flagstad seems to have agreed to sing again at Northampton; the recital took place on 2 July 1948.63 Hussey’s remarkable naivety when concerned with practicalities showed itself in a small detail which Patron of Art did not record. The delays and hesitations that had beset Moore and Sutherland should perhaps have shown Hussey the need to allow plenty of time to secure a new commission. However, he evidently wrote to Arthur Bliss, with only eight weeks to spare, to commission a new piece for Flagstad to sing. Bliss’ reply was polite enough, but clear: he had other commitments and time was far too short.64

Poetry: Auden and Nicholson We have noted already that Hussey had a liking for the verse of the English metaphysical poets, since several of the early anthems set these texts. Could the same could be done for contemporary literature, as he had proved was possible for music and sculpture? But, as he noted in Patron of Art, ‘the art of literature posed a problem.’65 Although there was little place in the liturgy for the visual arts, they by their nature could take a permanent position within the building. Music, though transitory, had a liturgical function to perform, and so a new composition could

62 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 17–18. 63 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 20. 64 Bliss to WH, 13 May 1948, at MS Hussey 320. 65 Patron of Art, p. 83. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 101 take on a recurring position in worship. The liturgy was of course full of words, but words of a previous century, hallowed by use and fxed by law with little or no room for deviation or addition. How might contemporary literature be incorporated? It was not only composers that Hussey tried and failed to commission for St Matthew’s. T.S. Eliot was not only established as perhaps the foremost living poet writing in English, but had in 1927 embraced Anglo-Catholicism, being confrmed by Hussey’s old confdant from his time at Cuddesdon, Thomas Banks Strong, bishop of Oxford. Hussey cannot have had much sympathy with what one biographer has described as Eliot’s ‘dogmatic orthodoxy, his concern with damnation … his sense of civilization’s decay and doom’; Hussey would have had much more in common with the ‘equable, mild-mannered temper’ of Eliot’s new- found clerical acquaintances in the Church of England.66 It was most likely the Eliot of Murder in the Cathedral with which Hussey would have had most sympathy: a rare example of an outstanding artist with an unequivocal public Christian commitment. Hussey had frst approached Eliot in 1943, through the publisher and art patron Eric Gregory, not for a commission but to invite him to the 1943 festival. Eliot had other commitments on the day concerned, but congratulated Hussey on his enterprise in securing the likes of Moore and Britten. Hussey tried again, in connection with the unveiling of the Madonna and Child in February of the following year, but Eliot was too much engaged with other work. In 1945, the frst mention was made of a commission of a hymn which might then be set to music by another hand. Eliot once again expressed his sympathy with Hussey’s aims, but felt that any such piece would have to satisfy his own artistic conscience before any consideration of the opinion of a commissioner. Such a work would need to emerge according to its own creative dynamic, and if and when it did, Hussey should have it, and with no question of any fee. Although Hussey was to mention the idea again in 1948, and a third time after his move to Chichester, Eliot’s creative mind never did issue in the work Hussey desired.67

66 Lyndall Gordon (1977) Eliot’s Early Years (Oxford: OUP), p. 133. 67 Letters from Eliot to WH: 22 September 1943, 8 February 1944; 20 January 1945; 28 November 1955, all at MS Hussey 316. 102 P. Webster

There were other poets that slipped out of reach. Although hard to date, there was an approach to Cecil Day-Lewis. The poet had been impressed by the work Hussey had been doing at Northampton, but thought himself too agnostic to be able to contribute to it honestly.68 More interested, at least in principle, was Walter de la Mare, whom Hussey frst approached in 1951. However, de la Mare was by then very elderly and in failing health, producing little new verse; the correspondence continued until 1953 at which point it ended without success.69 In 1945, Eliot had been asked for words, not for recitation but for setting to music. Whether this way of working was a congenial prospect for Eliot is not recorded in the exchange; it was not a use to which his words had often been put before. In the case of W.H. Auden, it was different. Auden and Britten had collaborated over the documentary flm The Night Mail in 1936, the operetta Paul Bunyan (frst performed in 1941) and, most importantly, the Hymn to St Cecilia (1940–1941).70 First broadcast to a British audience in November 1942, the Hymn to St Cecilia must have proved as startling as Rejoice in the Lamb was to be a few months later, and equally as far removed from contemporary expectations concerning sacred music.71 Whether or not Hussey was familiar with the piece is not known, but by May 1945 it was decided that Britten should mention to Auden the idea of a commission of words that he would then set. (Auden visited London twice in 1945 as part of a journey to Germany from New York.)72 Hussey wrote to remind Britten about the matter in July of the same year, and to Auden in January 1946.73 Auden responded swiftly, and in the positive, and also sent part of the text to Britten.74 The suggested form was a prose litany followed by a verse anthem, on the theme of St Matthew which Hussey had evidently suggested. The size of the fee was not fxed, but Auden made two

68 Day-Lewis to WH, no date, at MS Hussey 309. 69 De la Mare to WH, 2 February 1951, and 24 May 1953, at MS Hussey 310. 70 H. Carpenter (1992) Benjamin Britten. A biography (London: Faber), pp. 71–72, 147–149, 166–168. 71 M. Kennedy (1993) Britten, revised edition (London: Dent), p. 36. 72 H. Carpenter (1981) W.H. Auden. A biography (London: Unwin), pp. 333–336. 73 Britten to Hussey, 13 May 1945 at MS Hussey 297; D. Mitchell, P. Reed and M. Cooke (eds) (2004) Letters from a Life. Selected letters of Benjamin Britten: volume three (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), p. 163; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 83. 74 Mitchell, Reed and Cooke, Letters from a Life, p. 163. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 103 specifc demands: that it should be more than Hussey could comfortably afford, and that it should be donated to any fund relieving post-war dis- tress in Europe that extended its aid to the Germans.75 Hussey made a donation of £25 to Oxfam. Hussey had evidently understood from Britten that, should Auden produce a text, Britten would set it, much as he had in 1943 with Rejoice in the Lamb. Auden had clearly been led to believe the same by Hussey’s letters, since he had dispatched a copy of the fnished text to Britten in February, to give Britten plenty of time before St Matthew’s Day in September.76 On February 16th, Hussey put the matter to Britten explicitly: ‘I told [Auden], as you most kindly said I might, that if he wrote something you would be willing to set it to music. So if it comes along, do you think you could fnd the time?’77 Whether out of forgetfulness or self-protection, Britten seemed not to have remembered the idea. The text was ‘very, very lovely’ but ‘Walter, you blighter you never told me it meant more homework for me! You’ll have to wait, I’m afraid … Auden’s stuff is desperately hard to set and can’t be done over night [sic].’78 Hussey was, in fact, to wait indefnitely for Britten’s setting. The matter does not recur in the letters in the Hussey Papers, and so the Litany and Anthem for St Matthew’s Day was, in fact, printed and recited as part of a Festival of Holy Music and Poetry, read by the English actor Valentine Dyall.79 Although there is scant documentation of its making, Hussey did in fact receive something from Britten for the 1946 festival, but not what he had expected: the Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria, for solo organ. Britten’s only work for solo organ, it has attracted little critical attention, although it was played at Britten’s funeral at Aldeburgh and at the memorial service at Westminster Abbey.80 The theme from Vittoria was taken from the motet Ecce sacerdos magnus, with which the choir customarily greeted the arrival of the bishop on St Matthew’s Day.

75 Auden to WH, 30 January 1946, at MS Hussey 284. 76 Auden to WH, 1 July 1946, at MS Hussey 284. 77 Mitchell, Reed and Cooke, Letters from a Life, p. 165. 78 Ibid., p. 163. 79 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 84. 80 M. Kennedy (1993) Britten (revised edition, London: Dent), p. 109. 104 P. Webster

No correspondence about the piece survives, save for the service sheet Hussey sent to Britten about the frst performance, the Sung Eucharist on St Matthew’s Day.81 It is possible that Britten wrote the piece as an apology of sorts for the misunderstanding over Auden’s words. In any case, it seems not to have taken him long; Hussey had been told that it was composed in Britten’s mind while in bed one morning, after which he got up in order to write it down.82 It received its frst London performance shortly afterwards, and Alec Wyton added the piece to his recital repertoire, although the piece was not published until 1952, by Boosey and Hawkes, with a dedication to St Matthew’s.83 The Festival of Holy Music and Poetry in 1946 was the frst attempt by Hussey to provide a sequence of readings and music as an extra-liturgical event. Although it must have bulked very large as a proportion of the time taken, Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb was performed, along with one of his two settings of the Te Deum, possibly the setting in E made for St Mark’s church in Swindon in 1944, which Britten had mentioned in correspondence.84 On the advice of John Betjeman, Hussey turned to external help in selecting the literary items in the shape of Geoffrey Grigson.85 Hussey knew Grigson already, as he had published a notice on Moore’s Madonna and Child to which Hussey had taken exception.86 But Grigson knew Auden well, having published many of Auden’s poems of the 1930s in his review New Verse.87 The selections were mostly drawn from the seventeenth century, including George Herbert and the Anglican Jeremy Taylor, but also included the ‘Song to David’ by Christopher Smart. Most surprising for a congregation such as that at Northampton was the inclusion of Søren Kierkegaard. Hussey was unlikely

81 Mitchell, Reed and Cooke, Letters from a Life, p. 165. 82 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 148. 83 The London performance was in November, by Geraint Jones, at Westminster Central Hall: Mitchell, Reed and Cooke, Letters from a Life, p. 260; Wyton included the piece, playing presumably from the manuscript, at Exeter College Oxford in July 1947: ‘Recitals’, Musical Times 88, n. 1253 (1947), p. 232; B. Britten (1952) Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Vittoria (London: Boosey and Hawkes). 84 Britten to WH, 8 December 1944, at MS Hussey 297. 85 Betjeman to WH, 20 July 1946, at MS Hussey 284. 86 Henry Moore to WH, 22 May 1944, at MS Hussey 328. 87 Carpenter, Auden, p. 153. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 105 to have known, as Grigson would have, that Kierkegaard had been a key part of Auden’s return to the Anglican church in the United States in 1940.88 The ‘Litany and Anthem for St Matthew’s Day’ was not published in full during Auden’s lifetime, although Hussey reproduced it in Patron of Art. It takes an unusual form. The litany section loosely observes the traditional format of statement and response, but the effect is more that of an essay or meditation: the statement of sections of Biblical text relating to Matthew, in response to which Auden refected on certain contemporary temptations for Christians. Auden’s call to be satisfed in one’s calling to particular circumstances would have been digestible to an Anglican audience. Whether Hussey’s parishioners would have been conscious of any need for deliverance from the temptation to ‘worship … the fux of chance, nor the wheel of fortune, nor the spiral of the zeitgeist’ is less clear.89 The two stanzas of verse that form the concluding anthem are less clearly connected with Matthew, as at least some of the lines were originally intended for the end of Auden’s The Age of Anxiety but had been dropped. Auden was also to print the anthem, under that title, in the 1972 collection Epistle to a Godson.90 In Northampton, the ‘Litany and Anthem’ was reused in a similar festival the following year, and after that point disappears from view. Copies circulated amongst some of the clergy, including the dean of Liverpool, but the ‘Litany and Anthem’ seems not to have been read elsewhere with any regularity, if at all.91 Hussey clearly thought the venture a success, since as well as including the poem in Patron of Art, he would often cite it as an example to other potential commissionees. After sending Eliot a copy in 1948 in an unsuccessful attempt to interest him in doing the same, in 1949 he turned to another poet for a similar commission: Norman Nicholson.92 It is not clear how Nicholson came to Hussey’s attention, although from 1945 Hussey was acquainted with George Every, Anglican monk of the House

88 Carpenter, Auden, pp. 283–286. 89 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 84–86. 90 E. Mendelson (1999) Later Auden (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux), p. 273. 91 Frederick Dwelly to WH, 2 March 1954, at MS Hussey 115. 92 Mary Bland (Faber and Faber) to WH, 15 October 1948, at MS Hussey 316. 106 P. Webster of the Sacred Mission at Kelham, and a close friend of Nicholson.93 It is possible that Hussey heard a broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in March 1948 of a specially written poem for Easter, since very near the time of the broadcast, Hussey seems to have invited Nicholson to give a lay sermon at St Matthew’s, although he had to decline due to ill health.94 (Nicholson was, in fact, to send Hussey the manuscript of the poem, in case he should want to use it. There is no evidence that he did, but the manuscript remains in the papers.)95 Hussey approached Nicholson in the spring or early summer of 1949, asking for a poem for St Matthew’s Day again to be set to music, and offering some sort of fee. Nicholson accepted, while doubtful that his verse could be set easily. As it was Hussey’s plan to re-establish the Church as a patron, Nicholson would ask for the sort of fee he would receive from the ‘better magazines’—three to fve guineas, according to length.96 In the event, Hussey was to pay him fve guineas, although Nicholson protested that he had only intended to ask for three.97 The poem, ‘The Outer Planet—An Allegory’, was eventually printed as a booklet, along with Nicholson’s own explanatory gloss and two extracts from other texts, which Nicholson had selected as an aid to understanding. The link to St Matthew was provided by part of the Epistle reading set for St Matthew’s Day, from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: ‘For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ Nicholson’s poem elaborated on the image of light, as derived from the splitting of the atom. Not long after the frst use of atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the poem was a positive reclamation of the image, representing the creative

93 Every to WH, 23 September 1945, at MS Hussey 406; Every to WH, 28 September 1945, at MS Hussey 76; D. Boyd (2015) Norman Nicholson. A literary life (David Boyd), pp. 41–49. 94 The broadcast took place on 28 March 1948: Radio Times, 1276, 26 March 1948, p. 6; Nicholson to WH, 31 Mar 1948 at MS Hussey 114. 95 Manuscript of ‘The stone that was rolled away’ at MS Hussey 339. 96 Nicholson to WH, 2 June 1949, at MS Hussey 339. 97 Nicholson to WH, 12 August 1949, at MS Hussey 339. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 107 potential of the breaking apart of human self-will (“Rip the centre out, destroy the atom / And let the fre within burn through”).98 Nicholson’s expression was complex, and it is not clear what the Northampton congregation made of it. Nicholson might have wished that it were straightforward, but when the poetic idea is complex, he argued, it is dangerous to attempt to simplify it to what the poet might imagine was a level the audience might fnd easier.99 However, it is likely that Hussey found the extract from the eighteenth century Anglican divine William Law resonant with his own thinking: ‘This holy spark of the divine nature in [Man] has a natural, strong and almost infnite tendency or reaching after that eternal light and Spirit of God from whence it came forth.’100 It was this divine creative spark that Hussey saw in the artists he appreciated, and which his commissions were designed to release. Nicholson thought well enough of ‘The Outer Planet’ to include it in the volume The Pot Geranium, published by Faber in 1954. Writing to Hussey in 1984, he was more ambivalent, thinking it an uncertain work from a period of stylistic transition. Perhaps Hussey had been disappointed with it, he thought; it had not been what Nicholson had hoped to produce.101 Hussey’s reply has not survived, but he thought well enough of the poem to include it in full in Patron of Art, along with much of the correspondence. Nearer the time, he had sent a copy of the booklet to Britten and Pears in the USA, who were impressed enough with it to request several copies to pass to others.102 Despite the place given to both Auden and Nicholson in Patron of Art, they were the only two commissions of poetry in Hussey’s career. Although there were attempts to commission others for Northampton, the practice seems not to have continued in Chichester. This may have been because, confronted with the ‘problem’ of literature, he had not found a solution. Auden’s poem had been commissioned for setting to music and so to be used as part of the liturgy. This had been unsuccessful, and so it had instead been recited as part of a sequence of

98 The poem is reproduced in full in Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 89–91. 99 Nicholson to WH, 12 August 1949, at MS Hussey 339. 100 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 90. 101 Nicholson to WH, 10 August 1984, at MS Hussey 281. 102 Britten to WH, 5 December 1949, at MS Hussey 297; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 89. 108 P. Webster readings and music in a separate event, extraneous to the liturgy. This Festival of Holy Music and Poetry had been repeated in association with St Matthew’s Day 1947, but seems then to have been discontinued.103 There is no indication that the Nicholson poem of 1949 was actually ever recited, although it was printed both as a booklet and in the parish magazine.104 Although Hussey was a lover of poetry, he seems to have found no place in the life of the church in which it could easily be used in its own right.

Graham Sutherland As Henry Moore’s Madonna and Child neared completion in the winter of 1943–1944, Hussey’s thoughts turned to the opposite transept in St Matthew’s, the south. Something was needed to balance the Moore, in what was a relatively plain and unadorned space. Hussey’s mind had settled on a picture, and he had begun to think of names whose work at the time appealed to him: Ivon Hitchens, Ben Nicholson, John Piper, Matthew Smith, and Graham Sutherland. Both Piper and Sutherland had been part of Kenneth Clark’s war artists scheme, and Hussey had seen some of the results of the scheme exhibited at the National Gallery.105 Later in 1944, George Bell, hearing that Hussey was thinking of a painting, wrote to recommend Hans Feibusch, but by that time Hussey had already settled on Sutherland.106 During a visit to Moore’s studio to see the sculpture in progress, the two discussed the idea of a painting, along with some names, amongst which Stanley Spencer and Barbara Hepworth also fgured. Moore recommended Sutherland as the one most likely ‘to do something of the quality you require’.107 It is also possible that Harold Williamson, who had introduced Hussey and Moore, might have spoken of Sutherland, since the latter was also on the staff at the Chelsea School of Art. On

103 Programmes for both events at MS Hussey 123. 104 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 89. 105 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 49. 106 Bell to WH, 26 October 1944, at MS Hussey 317. 107 Hussey’s later recollection of the conversation, as given in R. Berthoud (1982), Graham Sutherland. A biography (London: Faber), p. 114. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 109

Hussey’s behalf, Moore invited Sutherland to the unveiling of the Madonna in February 1944, during which the two talked and Hussey showed Sutherland the church.108 Graham Sutherland was, like most of Hussey’s commissionees, of a similar age (he was some six years older). Like Moore, he had no previous experience of working directly for one of the churches, although (unlike Moore) he was a religious man, having been received into the Roman Catholic church in 1926, partly due to the infuence of his wife Kathleen, who had been born into an observant Catholic family. Sutherland later recalled that ‘we were all interested in religions of all kinds at that time, in much the same way as people at Cambridge were later interested in communism.’ At frst, he was ‘highly observant’ and, although in later life his churchgoing became infrequent, his religion remained ‘an infnitely valuable support to all my actions and thoughts. Some might call my vision pantheist. I am certainly held by the inner rhythms and order of nature; by the completeness of a master plan.’109 In conversation at St Matthew’s, Sutherland asked Hussey whether he had a particular subject in mind. Hussey’s frst idea was the Agony of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, because it would give Sutherland the scope that Hussey imagined he would want to incorporate elements of landscape. (It was only later that Sutherland would gain a reputation as a society portraitist. Much of his most prominent work to this point, other than the war art, was depictions of nature.) Hussey also thought he saw some affnity between Sutherland’s work and that of El Greco, whose Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane Hussey may well have seen in the National Gallery.110 In this, Hussey was perceptive, in that Sutherland had only recently been studying the very same El Greco work. The subject of the deposition, Christ’s descent from the Cross, had been a subject Sutherland had attempted while a student in the early 1920s.111 However, Sutherland’s suggestion was of a Crucifxion scene ‘of a signifcant size’, to which Hussey agreed. A fee of between £300

108 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 49. 109 Berthoud, Sutherland, pp. 55–56. 110 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 50. 111 Berthoud, Sutherland, p. 48. 110 P. Webster and £350 was mooted, with Sutherland retaining the right to sell the sketches.112 No deadline was set, but Sutherland wrote shortly after in terms that Hussey must have received as a vindication of his approach. By the use of ‘real and authentic works of art’ Hussey was doing more than he might realise to help bridge a gulf between contemporary art and the public, which tended not to see the ‘vitality and spiritual power’ of art, and mis- took unfamiliarity for ugliness. As to the commission, he would consider it carefully; a religious painting had ‘always been a wish at the back of my mind.’113 Hussey had now to be patient, as Sutherland needed both to fnd suffcient time and to be ready to address the theme. There was no reason why such a great theme should not be tackled afresh, Sutherland thought, but nonetheless (as he wrote to the painter Keith Vaughan) ‘it is an embarrassing situation, to say the least of it, to contemplate a man nailed to a piece of wood in the presence of his friends.’114 In the meantime, Hussey began the fundraising, chiefy by means of a collection box that sat alongside Moore’s Madonna. Donors included Hussey’s mother, and there were also the proceeds of a recital given by Britten and Pears in the church.115 By May, the fund was apparently growing quickly, and outstripping Sutherland’s readiness. As well as discomfort with the theme, Sutherland had technical diffculties with the task. By October 1944, it seemed to him that there were two contrasting ways of approaching the subject. One was ‘detached, formal, hieratic (?) and impersonal’, such as Eric Gill’s work in Westminster Cathedral, the result of which was ‘too soothing’. The treatment to which he inclined was instead ‘psychological or psychic and real (not necessarily naturalistic)’.116 By the following May, Sutherland was still fascinated by the diffculties of the task: the symbol of the Cross was a particular problem, having become so familiar that the action it

112 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 50. 113 Sutherland to WH, 24 February 1944, at MS Hussey 345, as at Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 50. 114 Sutherland to Keith Vaughan, as quoted at Berthoud, Sutherland, p. 114. 115 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 50. 116 Sutherland to Hussey, 3 October 1944, at MS Hussey 345, as given at Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 51. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 111 represented ‘must have become for many almost unreal.’ At this point, Sutherland still held open the possibility of falling back on the ‘less diffcult and less complex’ subjects of the Way of the Cross, or the Agony.117 As 1946 approached, the way seemed to clear. Sutherland’s commitments to the war artists scheme had ended by the spring of 1945, and once preparations for a major exhibition in New York in February 1946 were made, Sutherland was more able to begin work in earnest.118 By this point, two key imaginative shifts had occurred, which were to infuence the work profoundly. Before April 1945, he had apparently made no sketches at all, more than a year on from the frst conversation in Northampton. That month, whilst in the Pembrokeshire landscape that had already proved profoundly infuential on his work, Sutherland began to notice thorn bushes, and as he sketched and ‘the thorns rearranged themselves, they became, whilst still retaining their own pricking, space- encompassing life, something else—a kind of “stand-in” for a Crucifxion and a crucifed head.’119 The ‘idea of thorns (the crown of thorns) and wounds made by thorns’ became a particular preoccupation, resulting in numerous ‘thorn tree’ studies along with ‘thorn heads’, ‘a hollow head-shaped space enclosed by the points [made by the thorns]’.120 One of these thorn heads, from 1947, is in the Hussey collection at Pallant House. The second crucial shift came at some point in the middle of 1945 when Sutherland was sent a copy of a black-bound book from the USA Central Offce of Information. It was a series of photographs from the concentration camps as they were found by the liberating American army, published for distribution to the German people. Sutherland later recalled that ‘many of the tortured bodies looked like fgures deposed from crosses’ and had a great effect on him. ‘The whole idea of the depiction of Christ crucifed became much more real to me … it seemed to be possible to do this subject again. In any case the continuing

117 Sutherland to Hussey, 30 May 1945, at MS Hussey 345, as given at Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 52. 118 Sutherland, Berthoud, p.118, 124, 126. 119 Sutherland, ‘Thoughts on Painting’, The Listener, 6 September 1951, as quoted in M. Hammer (ed.) (2005) Graham Sutherland. Landscapes, war scenes, portraits, 1924–1950 (London: Scala), p. 142. 120 Sutherland to Curt Valentin (Buchholz Gallery, New York), 24 January 1946, as reprinted in Hammer, Graham Sutherland, p. 156. 112 P. Webster beastliness and cruelty of mankind, amounting at times to madness, seems eternal and classic.’121 These pictures and the idea of the thorn were to fuse in Sutherland’s mind with older crucifxions, notably that of Grünewald in the Isenheim altarpiece, to produce a work inexplica- ble outside its historical context. Sutherland knew the Isenheim altarpiece only from pictures (he saw it for the frst time in 1956). But the work had been a focus of a kind of pilgrimage for Germans after the First World War, a resource from the past on which to draw in a time of defeat and humiliation. Whether Sutherland knew it or not, the association between Grünewald and the sufferings of wartime had already been made.122 Up to this point Hussey had not mentioned the scheme to his Parochial Church Council (PCC), since there was nothing that he could show them. His hand was forced in June 1946 by an article in Good Housekeeping by the journalist John Pudney in which the commission was mentioned. Sutherland had apparently asked Pudney not to mention the scheme, although something in Hussey’s letter of complaint evidently placed Sutherland on the defensive. It was diffcult for a painter to work in complete silence, Sutherland argued, since others—critics, patrons—were wont to conclude from such silences that the artist was no longer working. Sutherland had also thought that the PCC knew of the scheme, the product of which they would be within their rights to reject upon sight. Hussey’s method—‘to present your Church Council with the idea, more less fait accompli, so that a modern painting might take via a quick assault!’—was not one to which he was accustomed.123 Hussey needed now to consult the Council, and persuade them. This he managed to do, by a combination of practical considerations and the same kind of expert advice he had called upon in relation to Henry Moore. There was a need for something to place in the south transept, he argued; a crucifxion scene would complement the Moore

121 Sutherland in conversation with the art critic Edwin Mullins, as published in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine, 10 September 1971. The version quoted is Hammer, Graham Sutherland, p. 105. 122 Berthoud, Sutherland, p. 229; A. Stieglitz (1989) ‘The reproduction of agony: toward a reception-history of Grünewald’s Isenheim altar after the First World War’, Oxford Art Journal 12, 87–103. 123 Sutherland to WH, 5 June 1946, at MS Hussey 345, as given at Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 53–54. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 113 opposite; Hussey’s research had made him confdent that Sutherland was the right man.124 Hans Feibusch had recently published his Mural Painting, passages from which Hussey read to the Council. Church authorities needed to avoid what Feibusch called ‘baby language … nurs- ery emblems, golden stars, chubby Christmas angels, lilies, lambs and shepherds’. The generation of men returning from the war had seen too much for these to be adequate: ‘Only the most profound, tragic, moving, sublime vision can redeem us.’ The Church needed to take the initiative and commission the best artists, give them ‘intelligent guidance’ in a new way of working and then ‘have suffcient confdence in their artistic and human quality to give them free play.’125 Although after the reaction to the Moore sculpture the members of the Council perhaps hardly needed it, here was Hussey preparing them for something in a genre that would surprise and indeed shock. They agreed to proceed on the understanding that it would be for the Council to accept or reject the painting when it arrived.126 That arrival was still some way off. In August, Sutherland came to Northampton to see the space once again, and wrote to explain that St Matthew’s Day in September was now an unrealistic date for any unveiling. No longer a war artist, Sutherland needed to compete for scarce supplies of canvas, and work for churches was not a priority for the Board of Trade which alone was able to grant priority permits. By calling in a favour, he had been able to get hold of the requisite board, but the supply of wood for framing was also short.127 Nonetheless, Hussey shortly thereafter travelled to Sutherland’s home in Kent to see the now fully developed sketches, in the company of Eric Newton. Kenneth Clark, who had previously seen the sketches, thought it ‘a truly great work, without concessions [to] the Rev. Hussey’. Hussey was less sure about the large fnal sketch (some eight feet by fve feet), and apparently expressed some reserve about the inclusion of what Sutherland described as ‘Hemlock Plants’.128 Discussing his concerns afterwards, Hussey was advised by Newton during their journey home

124 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 54. 125 H. Feibusch (1946) Mural Painting (London: A. & C. Black), p. 92. 126 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 55. 127 Sutherland to WH, 19 August 1946, at MS Hussey 345. 128 Berthoud, Sutherland, p. 127. 114 P. Webster to ‘trust the artist’; there might yet be changes. Shortly afterwards, on 3 September, Hussey put the design to his Council, in the form of mono- chrome photographs, this time supported by letters from Kenneth Clark and Newton. There was shock but not hostility, Hussey recalled, and the project went ahead.129 On 5 November, Sutherland arrived in Northampton with the painting almost fnished, and later stayed a week with Hussey while making some fnal amendments. This went on behind a large screen to shield the work from public and press attention, although the Council met to view it and to meet the artist. Hussey recalled some initial shock at the painting in situ, now nearly 2.5 metres high and more than 2 metres wide. Sutherland told the Council of his desire to connect the suffering of the war with the agony of Christ, which seemed to win over the doubt- ers. Hussey was also now entirely happy; the elements which had concerned him earlier—the plants, and also a skull and crossbones at Christ’s feet—were gone (Image 4.2). The unveiling and dedication was fxed for 16 November, a Saturday afternoon.130 Once again, the occasion was attended by members of Hussey’s growing circle of friends and allies: Henry and Irina Moore; Kenneth and Jane Clark; Eric Newton, and Harold Williamson. Newer to the circle were John and Myfanwy Piper, and Colin Anderson, a patron and encourager of both Moore and Sutherland and later chairman of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery. After asking Clark (who thought it inappropriate that he do the job again), Hussey approached Sir Eric Maclagan to perform the unveiling. Maclagan had been director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and was a keen churchman and a friend of Lord Spencer, another Hussey ally and chairman of the diocesan advisory board that granted faculties for modifcations to churches.131 Maclagan thought the painting ‘a noble and outstanding masterpiece of modern Christian art’, and was delighted to unveil it ‘as an act of praise by the living to Christ

129 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 56–58. 130 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 59–60; Berthoud, Sutherland, p. 128. 131 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 58–59. Spencer had advised Hussey that a faculty was not necessary, as the picture was moveable, only to be contradicted by the chancellor of the diocese. A confrmatory faculty was, in fact, granted after the fact, after no objections were raised. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 115

Image 4.2 Crucifxion by Graham Sutherland, in the church of St Matthew, Northampton. Image reproduced by kind permission of the Vicar 116 P. Webster crucifed’.132 The choir sang a motet by Victoria, and also Finzi’s Lo, the full fnal sacrifce, written for St Matthew’s Day that same year. Where the public reception in Northampton for the Moore Madonna had often been hostile, that for the Crucifxion was rather less so, as Hussey recalled.133 Amongst the critics, the reaction was positive indeed. Eric Newton, now a trusted ally, covered the launch for the Sunday Times. Sutherland had ‘dared to stand beside the great men of the Renaissance on their own high ground, and he survives the test. He has restated in his own terms a theme heavy with the associations of centuries.’ Even though it was ‘full of gropings and hesitations and imma- turities’ it was nonetheless a ‘remarkable achievement’.134 If any had imagined that English religious painting had died with Holman Hunt, they should take a train to Northampton, thought Benedict Nicolson, deputy Surveyor of the King’s Pictures and former Clark appointee at the National Gallery: the ‘religious intensity’ of the painting and its associated sketches, ‘the almost physical sensation of suffering conveyed by the rigidity and distortion of the forms, the cruel isolation of the fgure against its purple sky, are astonishing and quite without parallel in this island at the moment.’135 Moore’s Madonna had been criticised chiefy on two grounds (on which see Chap. 3), both of which Sutherland by and large avoided. The frst was that Moore, because of his own lack of Christian faith, had ultimately failed to grasp the theme in its fulness. ‘Sutherland is a religious man’ wrote Pierre Jeannerat, art critic for the Daily Mail; as a result, the painting was ‘an intensely genuine attempt to be worthy of the most grandiose and moving drama of the Christian world’.136 For Benedict Nicolson, Moore’s sculpted fgures ‘exist in scale and sentiment on the human level, possessing nothing specifcally religious about them’. While

132 Text of Maclagan’s address, privately printed, at MS Hussey 346. 133 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 63. 134 E. Newton (1947) ‘Symbolism of Sutherland’s Crucifxion’, Sunday Times, 12 January 1947, p. 6. 135 B. Nicolson (1947) ‘Religious painting in England’, New Statesman and Nation, 12 July 1947, p. 29. 136 As cited in Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 65. 4 MUSIC, ART AND POETRY: 1944–1955 117 the Madonna would be at home in a gallery, ‘Sutherland’s picture on the other hand is frst and foremost a work of religious art, impossible to imagine hanging anywhere but on the wall of a church.’137 The second major criticism of Moore’s Madonna was that that it did not meet expectations of how Mary should be portrayed. In Sutherland’s case, as Hussey noted, such a ‘profoundly disturbing’ treatment was appropriate for the event it depicted. ‘This is one of the most disturbing and shocking pictures I have seen’, thought one of the PCC after seeing the initial photographs; ‘therefore I think it should go into the church’. After the Holocaust, Hussey thought, only such a picture could hope to show that Christ knew something of human suffering.138 Sutherland had worked out his idea ‘on a bombed island at the end of the cruellest war in history’, Nicolson noted; ‘in the agony of Christ’s martyrdom on the cross,’ Sutherland ‘voices the present crisis in civilization.’139 Over time, the painting began to attract attention from outside the circle of specialist art criticism. In 1952, the BBC sent the fve presenters of the Home Service programme The Critics to Northampton to view both the Moore and the Sutherland works. All agreed that, whatever they thought of the works themselves, Hussey should be applauded for the effort. They were less unanimous about the Sutherland itself. The flm critic and screenwriter Paul Dehn, who had been at the unveiling, spoke of the ‘sheer pain of the fgure on the cross [that] hit one like a fst.’ Some other paintings of the Crucifxion seemed to show Christ in apparent ease, but ‘this one makes us share the pain that must have been felt.’ For the radio critic Frank Birch, it was too much: Sutherland’s handling of the subject was ‘almost sadistic and it literally turned my stomach over’. Summing up, the flm critic Dilys Powell thought that Sutherland ‘has suddenly made us see this dramatic moment in history freshly.’140

137 B. Nicolson (1947) ‘Graham Sutherland’s Crucifxion’ (typescript article for the British Council, at MS Hussey 327). 138 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 58, 63. 139 Nicolson, ‘Graham Sutherland’s Crucifxion’; Nicolson, ‘Religious painting’, p. 29. 140 Hussey had obtained an imperfect transcript from the radio broadcast, at MS Hussey 336. The Critics featured several different combinations of participants; this particular combination was used several times in August and September 1952: Radio Times, 1503, 29 August 1952, p. 12; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 63. 118 P. Webster

As Hussey had hoped, visitors to St Matthew’s began to read the Crucifxion in relation to the Moore Madonna, as the two works faced each other across the building, from the left and right of the altar. ‘The Birth confronts the Death’, wrote the theatre critic and broadcaster H.G. Whiteman in 1952, in a meditation shortly before Christmas for the Sunday Times. ‘There is no dialogue in this confronting, only an entire acceptance. This Child…looks straight out from Himself to the twisted anguish of that human body He has already become.’ Much as Hussey did for his congregation, Whiteman turned the works to a homiletic purpose: ‘our joy now at the Birth will remain a shallow thing…unless we see the meaning of the Birth in the whole sweeping movement of God’s Saving Action towards men.’141

Conclusion In a little over a decade, Hussey at Northampton had managed to commission two highly signifcant works of visual art; a long sequence of pieces of new music, ten in all; and two pieces of poetic writing, the latter an experiment which he was not to develop. In a short period of time, St Matthew’s had become widely known as a centre of extraordinary experimentation with the arts, and Hussey with it. Chapter 5 con- siders this growing renown, and the path to Chichester on which Hussey was set.

141 H.G Whiteman (1952) ‘The birth of Christ’, Sunday Times 21 December 1952, p. 6. CHAPTER 5

The Religious Arts on a Rising Tide: People, Media, Networks

In Chap. 2, we noted Hussey’s theological reticence: an unwillingness or inability to work out, in any conceptual depth, the meaning of the task he had set himself. Despite this, Hussey was, in part, able to suc- ceed because of his marked tendency to allow others, the ‘experts’, to do the talking for him. His confdence in his own judgement was concrete, but he did not expect PCCs or Chapters, Festival committees, or coun- cils of cathedral Friends to take his word for it. Instead, his method was to assemble a team of expert witnesses to testify to the talent of an artist and the general desirability of allowing him to work for the Church. At a time when the opinion of the ‘top people’ was powerful, the combined pressure of one’s parish priest, possibly one’s bishop, and some renowned critic, collector or gallery director would have been suffcient to quell all but the most determined of opponents. Hussey’s protesta- tions that he had the PCC and congregation of St Matthew’s with him at every step are in the most literal sense correct, but should nonetheless be read in this context. This chapter examines two particular relationships that Hussey had with infuential men, and on whose support he was ready to call: Kenneth Clark, and George Bell. It will also trace the outlines of Hussey’s growing renown within the Church of England and in wider circles of artists and critics, and his path to Chichester in 1955. But by the mid-1950s the relationship between the Church of England and the arts had changed a good deal since Hussey’s formation two decades earlier, and it is with that changed context that the chapter begins.

The Churches and the Arts in the Post-war Years In Chap. 2, we noted that Hussey had, in 1943, a theological framework in which he could locate his work, and some practical precedents and ways of working which he could emulate. By the time Hussey made his next signifcant commission, from Graham Sutherland for Chichester in 1961, the tide of the modern arts in the British churches seemed to have risen very signifcantly. Hussey’s work had helped to stimulate this, but the movement was wider, and Hussey, in turn, beneftted from it. Although the fundamentals of the theological debate had not changed to any great extent since the 1930s, the effect of the Second World War had been to sharpen and focus them. The interest in the subject that had been nascent before the War, and heightened by Hussey’s work during it, was given extra sharpness by the task of reconstruction afterwards. Hundreds of churches had been damaged or destroyed by German bombing, and debates were joined as to what to do with the remains. Should they be demolished, particularly in areas such as the City of London where they were almost without a congregation to use them? If they were to be rebuilt, in which style should it be? Should they be left in ruins, as a form of war memorial?1 These questions necessarily involved the issue of internal decoration, and stained glass in particular. In 1947, there appeared a collection of essays on Post-War Church Building, which dealt with glass, bells, plate and woodwork, as well as acoustics, heating and the design of the buildings themselves. It was introduced by John Rothenstein, director of the Tate Gallery, and a Roman Catholic. The Nazis had only completed the job of destruction with which the Puritan English had themselves begun, he argued: ‘no great nation has destroyed so preponderant a part of its own artistic heritage as ours.’ The task of recovering a live tradition of religious art that had been noted before the war was now newly urgent, and the responsibility on those leading it was heavy, since ‘the church is not only the House of God, but as a prominent building it is one which inevitably contributes largely to the beauty or the degradation of the neighbourhood in which it stands.’ Mistakes made now would be costly. It was ‘heresy’ that Christians should look exclusively to the past; to do so was ‘to immobilise certain particular moments in the life of the Church herself, and stunt the full

1 P. Webster (2008) ‘Beauty, utility and “Christian civilisation”: the Church of England and war memorials, 1940–47’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 44:2, 199–211. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 121 glory of the growing tree.’2 The task of reconstruction was an unprecedented opportunity, but one which needed to be grasped. That task of reconstruction was not merely one of bricks and mor- tar. When Kenneth Clark arranged the moving of the treasures of the National Gallery to safety in a Welsh slate mine, he was acting to pro- tect what many regarded as the artefacts of civilisation from a threat to its very existence.3 For many, that civilisation had been framed afresh in Christian terms. Once the war had ended, it seemed to at least some Christians that the whole social, economic and religious life of the nation was open for reconstruction from the very foundations. ‘Religion and art, the Church and the artist, may yet do something together again to transform the spiritual life of Europe’ wrote George Bell in 1942: ‘there is a void in the human soul, crying out to be flled.’4 And the period from the early 1950s onwards did indeed see an upsurge in new artistic commissions for the churches. In music, there were commissions of challenging new music, such the evening service for St John’s College Cambridge by Michael Tippett in 1961, or Vision of Christ Phoenix for organ, written for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962 by Malcolm Williamson: ‘a work of astonishing violence and power’, more challenging to the listener than anything written for Hussey at Northampton.5 In the visual arts, there was a signifcant period of patronage by the Church of England, independent of Hussey, which together give the lie to any understanding of Hussey as a lone fgure. In the parishes, John Piper was engaged in designing new windows for the bombed church of St Andrew in Plymouth (begun in 1957) and a wall mosaic for the new church of St Paul in the new town of Harlow (1958).6 Duncan Grant was commissioned to create a set of

2 J. Rothenstein (1947) ‘Introduction’ in E. Short (ed.) Post-war church building (London: Hollis and Carter), pp. 2, 7. 3 J.P. Stonard (2014) ‘Looking for civilisation’ in C. Stephens and J.-P. Stonard, Kenneth Clark. Looking for civilisation (London: Tate Publishing), pp. 13, 25. 4 G. Bell (1942) ‘The church and the artist’, The Studio, 124, n. 594, 81–89, at 90, 81. 5 E. Routley (1964) Twentieth century church music (London: Herbert Jenkins), pp. 142–144. 6 F. Spalding (2009) John Piper, Myfanwy Piper. Lives in art (Oxford: OUP), pp. 353– 354, 358. 122 P. Webster murals for Lincoln Cathedral in 1953, which were completed in 1956.7 The fgure of Christ in Majesty, made in aluminium for Llandaff Cathedral by Jacob Epstein, dates from 1954–1955.8 Basil Spence’s modernist design for the new Coventry Cathedral was accepted in 1951, and work had been commissioned from Epstein, Sutherland and Piper within the frst two years.9 The rising tide brought some opposition to the surface. A brief com- motion followed comments made by Sir Alfred Munnings, outgoing president of the Royal Academy, broadcast from the Academy banquet in April 1949: an attack on all the modernists, with a particular mention for Moore’s Madonna.10 Although Hussey devoted a good deal of space in Patron of Art to the sound and fury that followed, rather more substantial was the episode of Hans Feibusch’s mural for the Sussex church of Goring-by-Sea (1954), in which George Bell took the highly unusual step of overruling his own diocesan chancellor in favour of the artist. The episode brought into sharp relief key questions of the freedom of the artist to interpret a theme and of the power of the patron to dictate, as well as perennial questions of style and iconography.11 In both the specialist and mainstream presses, the issues that had been raised by Moore and Sutherland were increasingly debated in the round. In music, the house journal of the School of English Church Music continued to cover new church music, as did more general music periodicals, such as the Musical Times. Christian Drama, the journal of the Religious Drama Society, began life in 1946.12 For the visual arts, there was no specialist journal to cover the religious arts in particular, but several of the more general periodicals took an increased interest, such as Vogue and the Burlington Magazine and (internationally) the Magazine of Art, published in the USA. The Architectural Review covered both the Moore and Sutherland works for Northampton, as well as architectural sculpture by Jacob Epstein and the making of the new Coventry

7 E. Mayor (2001) The Duncan Grant murals in Lincoln Cathedral (Lincoln: Lincoln Cathedral), pp. 17–20. 8 R. Cork (1999) Jacob Epstein (London: Tate Gallery), pp. 70–71. 9 B. Spence (1962) Phoenix at Coventry (London: Bles), pp. 17, 36, 69. 10 W. Hussey (1985) Patron of Art. The revival of a great tradition among modern artists (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), pp. 67–71. 11 P. Foster (1999) ‘The Goring Judgement: Is it still valid’ Theology 102, 253–261. 12 E. M. Browne (1946) ‘Our aim’, Christian Drama 1:1, 1–2. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 123

Cathedral.13 The Studio carried articles frst by George Bell and then by Hussey himself in 1949.14 As it had done before the War, the theological press continued its coverage of the religious arts. The Student Movement, a university term-time periodical from the press of the Student Christian Movement, carried a series of reproductions of modern works of art between 1946 and 1948, with accompanying commentary from (amongst others) the architectural critic Nikolaus Pevsner.15 The main theological journals continued to carry articles on the broader issues of theology and aesthetics, and not merely from within the Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic con- stituencies.16 As the 1950s turned to the 1960s, the crop of short articles on the religious arts was supplemented by a series of book-length studies and symposia. There were volumes surveying the whole scene, such as Modern Christian Art by the Roman Catholic critic Winefride Wilson, published in the USA in 1965. Particularly signifcant was The Christian Faith in Art, jointly written by Eric Newton and the theologian William Neil. From a group of Roman Catholic artists and thinkers came the symposium on The Arts, Artists and Thinkers in 1958. In the way of theological refection by practitioners there was Approach to Christian Sculpture by the Roman Catholic sculptor Hubert van Zeller. From within the Church of England, the most signifcant work was Images of God (1960) by A.C. Bridge, formerly a professional painter of

13 E. Sackville-West (1947) ‘Art and the Christian Church’, Vogue (March) 64, 114, 120; Anon. (1948) ‘Modern church art at Assy’ Vogue (April) 58–61; N. Pevsner (1945) ‘Thoughts on Henry Moore’, Burlington Magazine 66, 47–49; ‘[Untitled article on Moore]’, Architectural Review (May 1944) 189–190; J.M. Richards (1952) ‘Coventry’ Architectural Review 111, 3–7; B. Nicolson (1947) ‘Graham Sutherland’s Crucifxion’ Magazine of Art (November), 279–281. K. Clark (1944) ‘A Madonna by Henry Moore’ Magazine of Art (November), 247–249. 14 G. Bell (1942) ‘The Church and the artist’ The Studio 124, 81–92; W. Hussey (1949) ‘A churchman discusses art in the Church’, The Studio 138, 80–81, 95. 15 The series ran monthly between 1946 and 1948, and included Moore’s Northampton Madonna, and works by Georges Rouault, John Piper, Marc Chagall, Eric Gill and David Jones. 16 E. Newton (1945) ‘The Church and the Artist’, Theology 48, 36–39; W. S. Reid (1958) ‘A reformed approach to Christian aesthetics’, Evangelical Quarterly 30, 211–219. 124 P. Webster landscapes, but now a parish priest in central London, who went on to become dean of Guildford.17 The rising interest in the religious arts happened to coincide with a period in broadcasting history when the BBC was at its most ready to broadcast ‘diffcult’ things in the name of cultural improvement. As well as the existing networks, the foundation of the Third Programme in 1946 opened up additional broadcast space for contemporary classical music, poetry, drama and speech radio.18 There was already an established tradition of live music broadcasting from churches by the BBC before the war, and the Northampton organ was regularly used (see Chap. 3). During the war, Northampton was also one of several ven- ues for broadcast concerts of instrumental music under the auspices of CEMA, such as the recital by Britten and Pears in October 1944. The musical commissions from Northampton were also broadcast soon after each event.19 As well as music, the BBC also covered the rising interest in the religious arts in speech broadcasting. George Bell, already a regular broadcast voice, spoke on the church as a patron twice, in 1944 and 1955.20 In 1946, Hussey gave a short talk, alongside music from the Northampton choir including Rejoice in the Lamb, in the programme London Calling Europe on the BBC European Service.21 The advent of television was ideally suited to the examination of art. The series The Eye of the Artist ran on BBC television from 1947 to 1949, calling at Northampton in March 1948 to flm the Moore and Sutherland pieces, hear music sung by the choir of St Matthew’s under Alec Wyton, and see Hussey debating the religious arts with the artist Mary Kessel and

17 W. Wilson (1965) Modern Christian Art (New York: Hawthorn); E. Newton and W. Neil (1966) The Christian Faith in Art (London: Hodder & Stoughton); J.M. Todd (ed.) (1958) The arts, artists and thinkers. An inquiry into the place of the arts in human life (London: Longmans); H. van Zeller (1960) Approach to Christian Sculpture (London: Sheed & Ward); A.C. Bridge (1960), Images of God. An essay on the life and death of symbols (London: Hodder & Stoughton). 18 H. Carpenter (1996) The Envy of the World. Fifty years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), passim. 19 Radio Times, 13 October 1944, p. 14 (CEMA concert); Radio Times, 29 October 1943 (Britten); Radio Times, 22 Nov 1946 (Berkeley). 20 G. Bell (1944) ‘The Church as Patron of Art’, The Listener 14 September, 298; G. Bell (1955) ‘The Church and the Artist’, The Listener 13 January, 65–66. 21 MS of Hussey’s talk at MS Hussey 204. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 125 the Keeper of Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, H.D. Molesworth.22 Tom Devonshire Jones has drawn attention to a series of exhibitions in the period after the war, as three key London shows of religious art occurred in the space of seven years.23 Lambeth Palace hosted an exhibition in 1951 on ‘Art in the Service of the Church’, and 1958 saw the Contemporary Art Society stage an exhibition on ‘The Christian Theme’ at the Tate Gallery, which subsequently toured some fourteen other towns and cities. In between the two, the International Faculty of Arts staged an exhibition, also in London, in connection with the coronation of the new Queen in 1953. ‘The Christian Theme in Contemporary Arts’ ran for a month in May and June at Park Lane House. The booklet accompanying the show contained forewords from each of the archbishop of Canterbury, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Westminster, and the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The patrons included C.S. Lewis and John Betjeman, and from among the clergy, George Bell; among the guest lecturers and their chairmen were Dorothy L. Sayers, Basil Spence and T.S. Eliot.24 It is a measure of Hussey’s prominence that he, still a provincial parish clergyman, should be on the advisory committee and preside over the press conference that advertised the exhibition.25

Eminent Laymen Those who have read thus far could be forgiven for thinking that Hussey did little else while at Northampton than pursue the arts. Whilst almost correct, this would not be wholly so. The later years of the war saw a good deal of debate within the Church and the nation at large as to the shape of the peace that was to follow the victory which seemed more and more likely. Even in the bleakness of January 1941, William Temple, archbishop of York, convened a conference at Malvern to look

22 Partial script at MS Hussey 205; Radio Times, 1275, 19 March 1948, p. 26. 23 T. Devonshire Jones (1992) ‘Art: Theology: Church. A survey, 1940–1990, in the United Kingdom’, Theology, 360–370, at pp. 361–362. 24 The Christian theme in contemporary arts [London, 1953]: copy at MS Hussey 180. 25 ‘The churches and the arts’, Methodist Recorder, 26 March 1953; ‘Christianity and Art’, Church of England Newspaper, 27 March 1953: cuttings at MS Hussey 460. 126 P. Webster forward to reconstruction, and many other events and publications were to take up the theme. In arranging a series of ‘Lectures by Eminent Laymen’, Hussey seems to have joined the chorus. The lectures at Northampton were in two series, in the spring of 1946 and 1948, num- bering nine in all. They were to be on ‘either some aspect of the Faith which the speaker thinks needs emphasis now, or of the life and duty of a Churchman in some particular sphere’, and the speakers were to be ‘men who have won outstanding distinction in lay occupations.’26 To be sure, artists loomed large in Hussey’s feld of lay occupations. Amongst those who were approached and refused were the conductor Malcolm Sargent, Norman Nicholson and John Piper.27 Among the nine who accepted were Eric Maclagan from the Victoria and Albert Museum and John Betjeman, both in the frst series. But there were also educational- ists, academics, jurists, parliamentarians, and military men.28 The enterprise again shows Hussey’s fascination with the famous and the eminent, but here is some evidence that Hussey was able to look beyond the arts, to imagine the role of the church as a broker of more general ideas. Hussey must have been particularly pleased with the sermon given by Betjeman in May 1946, which was printed along with the rest of the frst series. That Betjeman was altogether more thrown by the experience is evident from his letters. Apparently expecting to give a simple talk to ‘a circle of earnest young men and girls before the vicarage fre and a cosy chit-chat’, he found himself in front of some six hundred people at Evensong. As the congregation sang the line of the hymn ‘And may the music of thy Name / Refresh my soul in Death’, Betjeman knelt in prayer to exclaim ‘Oh God! Oh God!’ and ‘very earnestly echoed those sentiments and wished Death were at once.’29 Maclagan and Betjeman later agreed that they had seldom felt such apprehension as in preaching at Northampton.30

26 Two draft letters of invitation, undated, at MS Hussey 114. 27 Sargent to WH, 6 January 1946; Nicholson to WH, 31 March 1948; Piper to WH, 11 March 1948, all at MS Hussey 114. 28 Lt-.Gen. Sir Oliver Leese, Read-Admiral R.J.R Scott, and Lord Tovey, Admiral of the Fleet. 29 Betjeman to Anthony Barnes, 12 May 1946, in C. Lycett Green, ed. (1994) John Betjeman. Letters, volume one: 1926–1951 (London: Methuen), p. 389. 30 Maclagan to WH, 8 August 1946, at MS Hussey 114. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 127

Betjeman, three years Hussey’s senior, was also a product of Marlborough College. Betjeman recalled Hussey a little, but was evidently on friendly terms with Hussey’s brother Christopher, a closer contemporary, who visited the Betjemans in 1954 on his Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle, to the delight of Betjeman’s son Paul.31 Contact was frst made when Hussey asked for Betjeman’s advice on a suitable artist to make a credence table for the sanctuary at Northampton, in late 1943 or early 1944. Betjeman’s frst suggestion was Ninian Comper, a practitioner of a style rather closer to the rest of St Matthew’s than that of Henry Moore, by whose statue he thought Comper would be rather shocked.32 Very shortly after the sermon at Northampton, Hussey was again soliciting advice, this time concerning the printing of Auden’s anthem, for which Betjeman recommended Geoffrey Grigson. Hussey was also to try, twice, to persuade Betjeman to write for St Matthew’s— in 1950 and again in 1954—but met with polite refusal both times.33

George Bell George Bell is without doubt the other most signifcant name in Anglican patronage of the arts of Hussey’s time. A generation older than Hussey, Bell had become bishop of Chichester in 1929, after a spell as chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, and then as dean of Canterbury. Bell is most noted by historians for his criticism of Allied obliteration bombing of German cities, but his range was wide, not least as international ecumenist, friend of the German churches under Hitler, and as patron of the arts, as outlined in Chap. 2.34 To a signifcant extent, Bell provided the intellectual cover for the work that Hussey was engaged in but could not articulate. Like Hussey, Bell was shaped by the Catholic tradition in the Church of England, and the arts held a key place in his understanding of incarnation, creation

31 Betjeman to WH, 23 August 1954, at MS Hussey 292; A.N. Wilson (2006) Betjeman (London: Hutchinson), pp. 36–40. 32 Betjeman to WH, 29 January 1944, at MS Hussey 307. 33 Betjeman to WH, 20 July 1946, at MS Hussey 284; Betjeman to WH, 8 August 1950, at MS Hussey 292; Betjeman to WH, 23 August 1954, at MS Hussey 292. 34 On Bell’s contacts with Germany in the 1930s, see A. Chandler (2016) George Bell, bishop of Chichester. Church, state and resistance in the age of dictatorship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), pp. 42–61. 128 P. Webster and culture. Bell’s thinking before 1939 was often in line with the reviv- alist narrative described in Chap. 2. Medieval Europe had seen an inte- gration between faith, work and cultural production that had been lost, and in bringing the player and the artist back into the Church there was an opportunity to restore that connection.35 As was noted above, Bell saw the task of reconstruction after 1945 as being not merely physical, but cultural and spiritual, and the arts had their part to play. Although Bell had been active in the patronage of the arts from the late 1920s, it is not clear exactly when Hussey became aware of their common interest. In 1942 Bell published an extended article in the art periodical The Studio in which he set out the case for a restoration of the connection between the church and the artist.36 It seems clear that Hussey read the article, and drew the attention of others to it.37 Hussey’s sense of Bell’s infuence was such that when selecting a bishop to approach for an opinion on Moore’s statue to set alongside the recommendation from Kenneth Clark, it was Bell to whom he turned, as was shown in Chapter 3. The historian Alexandra Harris has connected the patronage of George Bell with an English romantic modernism. Particularly in his patronage of the religious drama, centred around the parish church as historic centre of ancient communities and involving local people as members of the cast, Bell did indeed share something of the sense of historic place that Harris detected in T.S. Eliot, John Piper and others.38 Arguably Walter Hussey fts this pattern to a degree, but less well than Bell. Although his own taste as a collector was very much for some of the artists that Harris describes, there is little in the Hussey commissions that is consciously resonant with either Northampton or Chichester as places. Moore’s Madonna very certainly fts the building; as we have seen, Moore took great care that it should do so. But its sources are both English and European, and older than the Gothic Revival surroundings

35 P. Webster (2012) ‘George Bell, John Masefeld and The Coming of Christ: context and signifcance’ in A. Chandler (ed.), The Church and humanity. The life and work of George Bell, 1883–1958 (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 55–57. 36 G. Bell (1942) ‘The church and the artist’, The Studio, 124, no. 594 (September), 81–92. 37 Harold Williamson to WH, 23 September 1942, at MS Hussey 353. 38 A. Harris (2010) Romantic Moderns. English Writers and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper (London: Thames and Hudson), pp. 193–205. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 129 of St Matthew’s. At Chichester, as we shall see in Chapter 6, Hussey had a clear and early opportunity to build on the connection with St Richard of Chichester, but was to pass it up. Hussey’s patronage was less parochial, more cosmopolitan, as the patronage of Chagall or Bernstein or the earlier approaches to Stravinsky and Durufé show.

Kenneth Clark Hussey’s single most infuential ally outside the Church of England was Kenneth Clark. By virtue of the phenomenally successful 1969 television series Civilisation, Kenneth, Lord Clark is now the single most recog- nisable grandee of the British art world of the period either side of the war. In his time, Clark was director of the National Gallery, chairman of the Arts Council and of the Independent Broadcasting Authority, Slade Professor of Fine Art in the University of Oxford, and Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. Clark was uniquely positioned as a broker of contacts and information at the nexus of the social and political elites with the artistic world, as artists mixed with government ministers and royalty at Clark’s Portland Place home during what Clark himself dubbed the ‘Great Clark Boom’ of the 1930s.39 Hussey could hardly have wished for a more prominent expert to provide cover and justifcation for Moore’s Madonna in 1944, as was examined in Chapter 3. But there was a great deal more that the two had in common, which goes some way to explain the regularity with which Clark acted in support of Hussey’s schemes, and why the correspondence between the two continued for nearly four decades. To begin with, they seem to have agreed on what was most vital in modern British art, and, in particular, about the group which became known as the ‘new Romantics’. Clark frst started collecting Henry Moore drawings in the late 1920s. He was in regular contact with Graham Sutherland by 1936, and had secured an important commission for John Piper to document Windsor Castle early in the war in case it should be bombed.40 Both the Moores and the Sutherlands, when fnancially straitened, had at different times lived with

39 C. Stephens (2014) ‘Patron and Collector’ in C. Stephens and J.-P. Stonard, Kenneth Clark. Looking for Civilisation (London: Tate Publishing), pp. 79–99, at p. 87. 40 Stephens, ‘Patron and Collector’, pp. 83, 92, 94. 130 P. Webster the Clarks.41 By the time in 1942 that Hussey had frst been impressed by an exhibition of Moore’s shelter drawings, Clark had already identifed and begun to patronise the artists who were to provide Hussey’s three most important commissions of English art. We might ask why it was that both Clark and Hussey should be so taken with this group in the 1940s, and not (say) with the greater abstraction of Barbara Hepworth or Ben Nicholson, or the craggier, more aggressive lines of Jacob Epstein. The way in which Clark wished to see British art go was one of conscious dialogue with the national past; his own collections are full of contemporary pieces that engage directly with historical and art-historical subjects. At a time when ‘civilisation’ was under threat from Nazism, such a concentration on Britishness in art is unsurprising. Clark also saw that the only sustainable direction for British art was towards fguration, and intelligibility to the general public, and away from what he saw as the continentally infected excesses of abstraction of the 1930s. Particularly after the outbreak of war, in the words of the none too sympathetic Herbert Read, abstraction was dead to Clark; it was time for ‘the picture with a story’.42 He saw in Moore, Piper and Sutherland, artists who could tell these stories, and it was in the telling of Christian stories that Hussey and others thought the future of religious art also lay. A shared taste was not the only reason that Clark and Hussey found themselves with a common aim. Throughout his career, but particularly in wartime, Clark was conscious that artists would not be able to live and work without patronage, and he was at the centre of the network of channels by which public funding was dispensed, and was buyer for the Contemporary Art Society as well as a considerable patron out of his own considerable resources. As we have seen, the need for a new approach to artistic patronage by the church had been grasped by George Bell;43 and in Hussey, both men saw someone who had already taken on the task. Unveiling Moore’s Madonna and Child, Clark argued

41 M. Secrest (1984) Kenneth Clark. A biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p. 152. 42 Stephens, ‘Patron and collector’, pp. 92, 96, 97–98. 43 P. Webster (2008) ‘The “revival” in the visual arts in the Church of England, c.1936– c.1956’, Studies in Church History 44, 297–306, at 302. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 131 that it was over a century since the church had last employed a sculptor working in a contemporary style. It was now time that the Church took up again an older ‘responsibility towards, and once more go to the fundamental nature of, art and of religious art in particular.’44 The correspondence that ensued between Clark and Hussey was to continue until Clark’s death in 1983, and is most full for Hussey’s Chichester years. Clark accepted Hussey’s invitation to unveil Graham Sutherland’s painting in April 1961, but was forced to withdraw for reason of ill health.45 There were other visits to Chichester, however, such as an occasion in August 1967, which gave Hussey the opportunity to show Clark the private Bishop’s Chapel at Chichester with its mural by Hans Feibusch, as well as his own private collection of art in the Deanery (a favourite pastime of Hussey’s).46 By letter, Clark advised Hussey on several occasions in relation to particular commissions: in favour of Geoffrey Clarke, who was later to create a pulpit and other pieces for Chichester,47 or on hiring a student from the Slade School of Art to design a Christmas crib (which seems not to have been made).48 The fullest and most public statement by Clark on Hussey’s work appeared in Chichester 900, a collection of essays on the occasion of the ninth centenary of the cathedral in 1975, devised and edited by Hussey himself (Clark’s essay is quoted at length in Chapter 2). Although the appearance in a book of a very fulsome tribute to its editor appears as something of a lapse in taste, or at least modesty, the impetus seems to have come from Clark himself. Hussey had asked Clark to write about the cathedral; Clark was more interested to write about its dean, unless the dean thought it invidious; Hussey was fattered and indeed embar- rassed, but the chairman of the appeal fund liked the idea, and so Clark got his way.49

44 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 41. 45 Clark to Hussey, 5 April 1961, at MS Hussey 401. 46 Clark to Hussey, 16 August 1967, at MS Hussey 401. 47 Clark to Hussey, 6 July 1960, at MS Hussey 401. 48 Clark to Hussey, 7 January 1964, at MS Hussey 401. 49 WH to Clark, 23 March 1974, at Tate Gallery Archive, TGA 8812/1/3/1414; Clark to Hussey, 18 March 1974, at MS Hussey 401. 132 P. Webster

Hussey as Collector Two bodies of source material survive which shed light on Hussey’s taste and his particular enthusiasms as they developed, and did not develop, over the course of his career. Both his own art collection and his collection of books on art and exhibition catalogues were left to Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Amongst the books and catalogues, some themes stand out. There are some 24 items relating to Henry Moore, and 20 for Sutherland. Also particularly well represented from among the neo- romantics are Piper, Paul Nash and Ivon Hitchens. Assuming that this collection is representative of Hussey’s reading and exhibition-going, Hussey engaged little with the successive movements in art that most exercised critical opinion in the 1950s and 1960s: abstract expressionism, pop art and minimalism. The collection includes catalogues for the Mark Rothko exhibition at the Marlborough New London Gallery in 1964, and the Tate Gallery show of Willem de Kooning in 1968. These, however, are isolated examples. Hussey’s interest remained largely with the generation of artists with whom he had grown up, and those younger fgures who painted in a generally fgurative style. At least as signifcant a legacy for the city of Chichester as the cathedral was Pallant House Gallery, which owes its existence to Hussey’s last act of benevolent blackmail. According to Patron of Art, Hussey was not alone in thinking that Chichester was in need of its own gallery, to cater for both local residents and the growing number of tourists and theatre- goers who visited the city. Pallant House, a Queen Anne town house a short walk from the cathedral, had been in the hands of the city for some time, but the authorities had baulked at the cost of converting it into a gallery space and the subsequent running costs. Hussey offered his private collection to the city on the condition that it be housed in Pallant House; otherwise it would go to the gallery in Northampton. The offer ‘helped to do the trick’, and Pallant House opened to the public in 1982, with Hussey’s collection forming a substantial part of its permanent holdings.50 A full analysis of Hussey as collector is beyond the scope of this study, although the Hussey Papers would provide a rich source for a study into the manner in which a private collection was acquired over half a century.

50 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 145. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 133

Hussey bought and sold pieces over the course of his collecting, and he was perforce only able to buy those that came to market, and at a price he could afford. However, some useful generalisations may be made from the collection in its fnal state as received by Pallant House, as an indication of his taste. The vast bulk of the works date from after 1880. Once again, of these, the group of English neo-romantics fgure heavily, and most heavily represented are the three whom he also commissioned. There are early works by Henry Moore, such as the sculpture A Child Suckling (1930), which Hussey bought from Moore in 1947 for £45.51 There are also examples of the renowned shelter drawings made during the London Blitz. Amongst the works by John Piper are designs made for the Chichester tapestry, and also the watercolour drawing Chichester Cathedral from the Deanery, dated to 1975 when Hussey was still its resident. Graham Sutherland is represented by no fewer than 15 pieces, only two of which are direct by-products of the two commissions. One of them is a portrait of Hussey, begun when Hussey was staying in Venice with the Sutherlands in 1957, left unfnished at Sutherland’s death, and later given to Hussey by the artist’s widow.52 Also represented in the collection from among the neo-romantics are Paul Nash, John Minton, Ivon Hitchens and David Jones. There is evidence that Hussey took advice and practical assistance from others. A drawing by Jean Antoine Watteau, dating from 1708, was bought on the advice of Henry Moore.53 Saudade by the painter Ceri Richards was on Hussey’s dining room wall when Barry Norman from the Daily Mail called in 1965; Moore had advised that he buy it, Hussey explained. Hussey had been worried that some of the canons might be offended by it (Norman described it as showing an ‘all-nude necking party’). However, once George Bell had seen and approved it, any dissent was quelled.54 In 1969, Kenneth Clark had helped obtain an introduction for Hussey to the Cabinet de Dessins in Paris, in order to view

51 D. Coke and N. Collyer (1990) The Fine Art Collections. Pallant House, Chichester (Chichester: Pallant House) p. 40. 52 Sutherland to WH, 28 May 1957, at MS Hussey 345; Coke and Collyer, Fine Art Collections, p. 23. 53 Coke and Collyer, Fine Art Collections, p. 45. 54 B. Norman (1965) ‘The swinging Dean peps up the Psalms. With a touch of West Side Story’, Daily Mail, 9 August: cutting at MS Hussey 358. 134 P. Webster some unspecifed works by Watteau, and in the same year, was advising Hussey to buy a work by the British artist Victor Pasmore.55 It seems likely that the presence in Hussey’s collection of a relief print by the nineteenth century artist Utagawa Hiroshige was down to Clark’s infuence, since Japanese art was an abiding interest of his.56 In general, the infuence of Kenneth Clark is evident from the overall composition of the collection. Like Hussey, Clark was profoundly out of sympathy with much of the development in painting after the War: a visit to Andy Warhol’s studio in New York in 1964 induced a sneezing ft, so upset was he.57 ‘The incomprehensibility of our new cosmos seems to me, ultimately, to be the reason for the chaos of modern art’, he told the viewers of the Civilisation series in 1969: ‘I am completely baffed by what is taking place today. I sometimes like what I see, but when I read modern critics I realise that my preferences are merely accidental.’58 The evidence of Hussey’s patronage, collecting, viewing and reading suggests that Hussey would have agreed. In the 1940s, it had been possible to argue that contemporary art was the means by which a fresh expression of Christian faith might be possible. It would have seemed less than clear to him that the contemporary art of the 1960s was ft for the purpose. It may be that the key fault line between contemporary art and ecclesiastical patrons was between fguration and abstraction. Hussey’s gallery visits seem to have included shows by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Kurt Schwitters, but his own collection is heavily weighted towards fgurative work. The one work in the collection by Ben Nicholson, an artist with a strong tendency towards abstraction, is in fact a landscape painting. His collecting, like his patronage for Chichester, remained centred on an older generation of artists working in a fgurative way. Fundamentally, for Christian art to be acceptable, it needed to depict something, either a fgure or a symbol. Hussey’s own taste was largely the same. We shall see the testing of this boundary in relation to John Piper in Chap. 6.

55 Clark to WH, 6 May 1969, at MS Hussey 401; Clark to WH 26 February 1969, at MS Hussey 401. 56 Stonard, ‘Looking for civilisation’, pp. 14–16. 57 Stonard, ‘Looking for civilisation’, p. 29. 58 K. Clark (1969) Civilisation (London: BBC), pp. 345–346. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 135

The Roads not Travelled As Hussey’s stock rose within the Church of England, so the offers of other positions began to come. One such offer arrived in the summer of 1947, of the living of the parish of Oakham, within the same diocese of Peterborough. Hussey’s bishop, Claude Blagden, recognised that he would be reluctant to leave Northampton, but was equally frm that he should not plan to stay there his whole career. Hussey’s reply, whilst scrupulously polite, reveals much about his own sense of where the core of his ministry was to be found. Hussey hoped that ‘if and when a call comes to me to go elsewhere I shall not be held back by selfsh considerations’, and recognised that ‘the ordinary pastoral work is the main work of the parish and I want always to see that it has its rightful supremacy.’ Chapter 8 examines the degree to which this was, in fact, a fair summary of Hussey’s priorities when his record is examined, but to Blagden he stressed that there were ‘other aims’ (that is, in relation to the arts) ‘which have perhaps a wider signifcance, and which I believe passionately that it is my task to try to further in a small way.’59 Hussey knew that a move to a comparable parish church would not further those aims, and so the offer was not accepted. Hussey had thought Blagden unsympathetic with the St Matthew’s project when called upon to unveil the Henry Moore three years before.60 His recommendation of Hussey for just another parish church, immediately after four successful musical commissions and two artistic ones, and as Hussey’s profle in the broadcast media was growing, indicates the limited value that Blagden placed on the enterprise. Hussey was also able to resist offers from rather more socially signifcant churches in London, including Hackney in 1948, and Ealing in 1949.61 There was another offer from London that must have given him greater pause for thought. After the war, the devastation wrought upon the buildings of London put in doubt the future of the City as a place in which to live. The City of London now had a great many parish churches, a great deal of war damage, and an almost non-existent

59 WH to Blagden (undated draft), at MS Hussey 94. 60 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 40. 61 H.C. Montgomery-Campbell (bishop of Kensington) to WH, 31 May 1948, at MS Hussey 95; O.H. Gibbs-Smith (archdeacon of London) to WH, 21 April 1949, at MS Hussey 97. 136 P. Webster resident population. One creative response to the issue was the designa- tion in 1952 of sixteen of the remaining churches as ‘guild churches’, for which there was no responsibility to hold any Sunday services. The incumbent was to minister to the population during the working week, but also to develop an area of particular expertise. In the words of J.W.C. Wand, bishop of London, ‘the City may become a great laboratory in which new methods of ministry, new spiritual expedients, and new pastoral techniques may be tried out for the beneft of the Church as a whole.’62 It was surely in relation to the arts that Hussey was asked to allow himself to be considered for the living of St Lawrence Jewry in 1954, the offcial church of the Corporation of London.63 Hussey evidently did not take the matter any further, perhaps due to the diffculty of working in a severely bomb-damaged church without a choir or organist, or a corporate worshipping life with which the arts could be integrated. George Bell was the source of the other most creative, if unsuccessful, attempt to deploy Hussey’s talents in unaccustomed ways. Bell had made several experiments at Chichester with different modes of patronage: ways in which the relationship between the church and the artist and craftsman might be brokered more effectively. The niche in which Bell saw Hussey ftting was one that deployed an ancient offce in a novel way. The offce of treasurer of the cathedral was in 1948 held by Hugh Hordern, retired suffragan bishop of Lewes. It was a largely titular post, attracting no emoluments, and had no requirement that the holder be resident in Chichester. The role was not, in fact, a fnancial one, but when originally instituted had enjoined a responsibility for the treasures of the church such as the plate, and for locking the doors in order to secure them. Hordern was prepared to swap this stall for another, and Bell saw an opportunity to signal something important to the wider Church by the creation of a role specifcally in relation to the arts in the diocese. Bell travelled to Northampton in November 1948 to offer Hussey an expanded version of the job. Bell wanted the Treasurer to work for the diocese as a whole, raising the standard of everything from fttings,

62 P. Welsby (1984) A History of the Church of England, 1945–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 29. 63 O.H. Gibbs-Smith to WH, 3 May 1954, at MS Hussey 98. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 137 ornaments and embroideries to new paintings and sculpture.64 Were he to accept, Hussey would, in addition, be a member of the Sussex Churches Art Council, a group unique to Chichester and a Bell creation, which had a similar task of promoting new art in churches. More strategically, the new treasurer would also be a member of the diocesan advisory committee on faculties, the body charged with approving major amendments to the fabric of churches. Most faculty applications were uncontroversial, but some were not, as Bell was indeed himself to fnd later in the case of the Feibusch murals for the parish church of Goring- by-Sea.65 Hussey’s presence, and the networks of advice on which he was evidently able to draw, were clearly key to Bell’s thinking. However, despite Bell’s approach, Hussey was to turn the offer down. It is not clear from the papers why this should have been, although Hussey evidently considered the offer seriously, and took advice. Most likely it was Hussey’s very elderly father, still living nearby in Northampton, that kept Hussey there. John Rowden Hussey died the following year, and in 1955, Bell was to try again, this time successfully.

Chichester In January 1955, Arthur Stuart Duncan-Jones, dean of Chichester since 1929, died of a heart attack, which gave Bell his chance to try again. In late March, Hussey received the letter from Prime Minister Churchill, asking him to allow his name to put forward for the approval of the Queen. Offcial confrmation came on April 7, to Bell’s delight (Image 5.1).66 So it was that Hussey came to take charge of Bell’s cathedral in Chichester. Recent historians of modern art in the cathedral have noted an almost complete absence of new work in the visual arts in the frst half of the century, and despite Bell’s record of energetic patronage elsewhere in the diocese, it was not until 1951, over two decades into his

64 Bell to WH, 16 November 1948, at MS Hussey 96. 65 P. Foster (1999) ‘The Goring judgment: is it still valid?’, Theology 102, 253–261. 66 Winston Churchill to WH, 26 March 1955; Bell to Hussey, 29 March 1955, both at MS Hussey 89. 138 P. Webster

Image 5.1 George Bell and Hussey welcoming guests to the Bishop’s Palace in Chichester, mid-1950s. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 66 time as bishop, that Bell had been able to place a piece of modern art in the building. The Baptism of Christ (1951) by Hans Feibusch was made possible by a gift to Bell of £200, but in fact, the chapter members were unhappy with the painting, making it clear to Bell that they would not have accepted it from any other donor.67 In his private chapel in the Bishop’s Palace, yards away from the south-west corner of the cathedral,

67 The present-day visitor to the cathedral sees the painting not in its original location. Painted for a recessed and blocked doorway in the south wall, it was moved to the west wall when the door was reopened in 1977, a move of which Feibusch disapproved. D. Coke and R. Potter (1994) ‘The Cathedral and modern art’ in M. Hobbs (ed.) Chichester Cathedral. An historical survey (Chichester: Phillimore), pp. 267–269. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 139

Bell could be more free; in 1953, Hans Feibusch created a mural painting of the Ascension in the intimate space of the chapel. There was also a pre-existing tradition of religious drama in the diocese. Bell was the frst bishop to appoint a diocesan Director of Religious Drama in 1930, in the form of E. Martin Browne. The latter estimated that in his four years in the role, the number of parishes staging nativity plays more than quadrupled. Bell also founded the Chichester Diocesan Players to travel the diocese demonstrating the possibilities of a newly revived idiom. This revival of the drama also touched the cathedral, in the form of a massive pageant on the life of St Richard of Chichester, presented in the gardens of the Bishop’s Palace as part of the centenary celebrations of the Oxford Movement in 1933.68 There were also signifcant sympathies between Bell and Duncan- Jones, his dean: common priorities which also prepared the ground for Hussey. In their respective spheres of diocese and cathedral, both were passionately concerned for an historically authentic yet engaging form of Anglican worship that stayed within the bounds of the church’s authority. For Bell, this involved the exceptionally diffcult task of countering the liturgical anarchy in some of the Anglo-Catholic parishes in the diocese, caused in large part by the vacuum created by the double rejection by Parliament of the revised Book of Common Prayer in 1927–1928. Bell also took the novel step of appointing a Diocesan Liturgical Missioner, Henry de Candole (an early adviser for Hussey), tasked with taking the renewal of parish liturgy associated with the Parish Communion movement into the parishes.69 Bell had advised Archbishop Lang to appoint Duncan-Jones as dean, as someone with the liturgical and musical sense needed to reinvigorate the liturgical life of the cathedral, as Bell was trying to do in the parishes.70 In this, at least, Duncan-Jones did not disappoint. His manual of Anglican worship, the Chichester Customary (1948), was soon widely recognised as a working-out of a mode of worship that had the authority of the bishops and that balanced freshness with respect for the past, and without fussiness. Chichester became, for a time, a model for other places, both cathedral churches and parish churches: in the words of

68 R.C.D. Jasper (1967) George Bell, bishop of Chichester (London: OUP) pp. 122–125. 69 Jasper, George Bell, pp. 164–178. 70 Jasper, George Bell, p. 165. 140 P. Webster

Duncan-Jones’ biographer (himself a cathedral dean), Chichester became ‘a model for worship of a ceremonious, even a splendid kind, but always after the true English pattern.’71 Arthur Browne-Wilkinson, one of the clergy writing to welcome Hussey to the Deanery, thought the role that ‘D-J’ had gained for the cathedral was both desirable and useful.72 Duncan-Jones was also a thinker and scholar as Hussey was not, and in his published writings may be seen a Catholic theology of the arts to which Hussey would likely have subscribed. Duncan-Jones had succeeded Percy Dearmer as vicar of St Mary’s, Primrose Hill, and had contributed an essay to Dearmer’s volume on The Necessity of Art (1924). ‘Man is so made’, he argued, ‘that he responds automatically to that which he sees well done’: a response which rightly should include ‘a sense of rightness, a cognizance of beauty’ of which he should not simply approve but to which he should respond. ‘He has the immediate sense of a Vision’ which demands a response, which could take many forms, one of which was a response of the imagination. ‘His expression of the Vision will take shape in things that are the products of his hand’s cun- ning. He will make temples, and paintings, and sculpture.’ Those who were suspicious of such activity were wrong to suppose that the object of art was merely to give pleasure: the function of art was ‘to interpret in sensible form the truth and beauty that has been seen.’73 Here was Hussey’s inchoate sense of the religious character of the making of art given conceptual shape by his predecessor at Chichester. Of course, in the polity of the Church of England, it is not wholly accurate to refer to Chichester as ‘Bell’s cathedral’ at all. Although the fnal authority in cases of controversy rests with a diocesan bishop, deans and chapters have been prepared to assert their independence from the bishop in much of the operational life of the cathedral. Bell had been shocked to discover from an acquaintance in the Athenaeum that more than a hundred of the cathedral’s books were to be sold at auction, to fll a hole in the cathedral’s fnances. In response he launched a visitation

71 S.C. Carpenter (1956) Duncan-Jones of Chichester (London: Mowbray), pp. 62–68: quotation at p. 62. 72 Browne-Wilkinson to WH, 6 April 1955, at MS Hussey 89. 73 A.S. Duncan-Jones (1924) ‘The art of movement’, in P. Dearmer (ed.) The Necessity of Art (London: SCM), pp. 77–80. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 141 in 1948, as was his right as bishop, which led to the appointment of his trusted former chaplain, Lancelot Mason (by that time archdeacon of Chichester) to the chapter in order to act as Bell’s eyes and ears.74 During this time, relations between Bell and Duncan-Jones were strained to the limit.75 Hussey certainly knew of this episode; the Hussey Papers contain what appear to be copies of some of the extremely fractious correspondence between dean and bishop, made specially for Hussey’s information.76 There were some potential allies among the cathedral community when Hussey arrived. Bell, frustrated in his attempt to make Hussey the treasurer of the cathedral in 1948, had instead appointed C.B. Mortlock, who had combined parochial duties in London with a career as a journalist for the Daily Telegraph, writing variously on ecclesiastical matters, church architecture and more besides. A friend of the sculptor Jacob Epstein (whose head of Mortlock stands near his church of St Vedast, Foster Lane, in London), Mortlock was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and for a while a lecturer in ecclesiastical art at King’s College, London. He was also already known to Hussey, having visited Northampton in 1944 to see the Moore Madonna and Child and been impressed by Hussey’s pioneering work.77 He was also an advocate of the work of Hans Feibusch, recommending him to Hussey in 1944, and had supported the murals at Goring when presiding over the diocesan advisory committee, in his capacity as treasurer.78 There were, however, some practical diffculties for the new dean, one of which was the exaggerated seniority of his new colleagues. Mortlock was in his late sixties and, in theory, close to retirement, although he in fact remained treasurer until his death in 1967 at the age of 79. Lancelot Mason was a sprightly ffty, but A.R. (Arthur) Browne-Wilkinson, the precentor, was already past 65. William Lowther Clarke, the third residentiary canon was in his mid-seventies, as was the organist, Horace Hawkins. There was, therefore, in the chapter the natural conservatism

74 Jasper, George Bell, p. 35. 75 P. Barrett (2004) ‘The visitation to the Cathedral’ in P. Foster (ed.) Bell of Chichester, 1883–1958 (Chichester: University of Chichester), pp. 51–66. 76 There are copies of three letters from November 1947 at MS Hussey 461. 77 Mortlock to WH, 4 October 1944, at MS Hussey 333. 78 Mortlock to WH, 14 October 1944, at MS Hussey 317; Jasper, George Bell, pp. 131–132. 142 P. Webster of a group of older men who had been together for a long time. One indication of this was the fact that, while Hussey had been holding recitals of music at Northampton for over a decade, in 1953 the chapter was still concerned enough about the implications of concerts in relation to licensing to be taking legal advice.79 Over a decade after the events themselves, the overtones of Bell’s dispute with Duncan-Jones can still be heard in a protracted correspondence over the seemingly arcane matter of the relative precedence of bishop, dean and chapter in the proces- sions during the installation of Roger Wilson as Bell’s successor as bishop in 1959.80 There were also signifcant diffculties with the building itself (Image 5.2). Robert Potter, the cathedral’s consulting architect, drew attention in his frst report of 1961 to serious issues with the fabric of the building, which were to necessitate extensive works.81 John Birch, who joined the staff as organist in 1958, recalled an organ that had once been a fne instrument, but which was kept running by innumerable small repairs and which only ran at full power during the warmer summer months. Birch remembered the situation as ‘farcical’ and indeed the organ was taken out of commission entirely in 1972, to be replaced with a temporary electronic instrument. Birch also recalled the diffculty of recruit- ing boy choristers when in competition with cathedrals at Winchester, Salisbury, Portsmouth and Guildford, and being close to London.82 So it was that Hussey found a cathedral with a keen sense of its worshipping ideal, but deeply conservative, elderly in outlook and facing signifcant practical challenges. Hussey’s memoir records that he was conscious that he came with a reputation for controversy, and so he deliberately refrained from major decisions for the frst few years of his time at Chichester, in order to develop relationships with the people involved and gain their confdence.83 As Garth Turner has pointed qout, this obscures the truth of the frst six years of Hussey’s tenure, before the successful reinstatement, in 1961, of the stone Arundel screen across

79 Macmorran to J.S. Widdows, 20 November 1953, at MS Hussey 461. 80 MS Hussey 135, passim. 81 R. Holtby (1994) ‘The immediate past’ in M. Hobbs (ed.) Chichester Cathedral. An historical survey (Chichester: Phillimore), p. 283. 82 J. Birch and A. Thurlow (2004) ‘Music at the Cathedral’ in P. Foster (ed.) Chichester and the Arts, 1944–2004 (Chichester: University of Chichester), pp. 115–116, 113. 83 Hussey, Patron of art, p. 100. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 143

Image 5.2 Chichester Cathedral from the north-east 144 P. Webster the entrance to the choir, in memory of the, by then, late George Bell.84 This was largely a scheme of restoration, but Hussey had decided early on more signifcant moves, showing along the way that while some were to be charmed, others could be marginalised in order to achieve his ends. Duncan-Jones’ architect, to whom the cathedral usually turned for advice on alterations to the fabric, was Randoll Blacking, a pupil of Ninian Comper who suited Duncan-Jones’ fne, if antiquarian, taste. Whether or not Hussey knew of this standing arrangement is not clear; in any case, Hussey wrote to the Royal Institute of British Architects before the end of 1955, asking for a recommendation.85 The answer was Basil Spence, a very different prospect, a suggestion which must have caused consternation at Chichester as it did in the Cathedrals Advisory Committee of the national Central Council for the Care of Churches. Spence was already known as the architect of the yet-to-be-completed cathedral at Coventry; it is hard to imagine a more infammatory choice for Hussey to have made.86 Blacking apparently knew nothing of his demotion until learning of it from a third party, but had thought that Hussey’s appointment might mark the end of his involvement at Chichester.87 There was already a list of schemes in Hussey’s mind and before the Cathedrals Advisory Committee, including the colouring of the Sherburne screen behind the high altar (an emulation of an older scheme), a new pulpit for the nave, and refurbishment of the Mary Magdalene Chapel. The frst of these was under discussion with Spence as early as November 1955, but was eventually abandoned.88 Spence had proposed colouring the wooden screen, but had become convinced (as

84 G. Turner (1992) ‘“Aesthete, impresario and indomitable persuader”: Walter Hussey at St Matthew’s, Northampton and Chichester Cathedral’ Studies in Church History 28, 523–535, at 528. 85 Minute of meeting of administrative chapter, 25 November 1955, at WSRO Cap I/3/14, p. 23. 86 Turner, ‘Walter Hussey’, p. 528. 87 Blacking to Judith Scott (Cathedrals Advisory Committee), 10 August 1956, at CERC, CATH/CS/CHI/1. 88 Spence to WH, 4 December 1955, at MS Hussey 163. 5 THE RELIGIOUS ARTS ON A RISING TIDE: PEOPLE, MEDIA, NETWORKS 145 were the experts on the Committee) that the reredos that sat in front of it needed to be removed. For Spence, it was a poor piece of work in any case, and made a successful realisation of the colouring scheme almost impossible. Hussey was unable to persuade his colleagues of the point, and the scheme petered out.89 Whether this was due to affection for the reredos, or covert opposition to Spence, is not clear, but the correspondence with Spence lapsed, never to be resumed. The architect Robert Potter, who was to serve as cathedral surveyor for most of Hussey’s time, after the retirement of Harry Sherwood in 1959, had by early 1957 been asked to advise on the Mary Magdalene chapel. Potter visited Chichester in February and thought Hussey, though unsympathetic to Blacking, to be sensitive and knowledgeable on contemporary work, as well as charming.90 However, he was wary, since he was aware that Spence and Blacking were already involved at Chichester; word had also got around that Hussey had allowed the cathedral Friends to understand that Frederick Etchells (a third architect asked to help) had retired from practice on the grounds of ill health—an unwelcome surprise to Etchells himself.91 So long as he was able to take his parochial church council with him, a parish priest was relatively free to act. Hussey had, in the space of twelve years, been able to secure ten new pieces of music for Northampton, along with two pieces of art. It would seem that Hussey arrived at Chichester with an expectation of a similar freedom. But cathedrals were bodies with a greater consciousness of their own past than Victorian parish churches, and a weight of precedent, precedence and interlock- ing traditions and interests that had to be lifted. Hussey’s handling of relationships, usually very secure, had to some extent let him down in these frst few months. Within only two years of arriving, Hussey was

89 Spence to WH, 6 February 1957, at MS Hussey 163; Judith Scott to WH, 14 January 1957, at MS Hussey 163. 90 Potter to William Croome (Central Council for the Care of Churches), 12 March 1957, at CERC, CATH/CS/CHI/1. 91 Etchells had written to Hussey reporting that he had been involved in a car accident, but the letter makes no mention of retirement: Etchells to WH, 4 September 1956, at MS Hussey 160. The deliberations of the Chapter suggest that there was a subsequent letter from Etchells, but this seems not to have survived: 28 December 1956, WSRO, Cap I/3/14, p. 140. 146 P. Webster frustrated: ‘I’m sad’, he wrote to Bell, ‘that none of the major projects for fostering the contemporary Arts have come to completion while you are here. The affairs of a Cathedral, like the creations of real artists, seem to mature slowly’.92 The power of persuasion and the personal touch were not as effective in an ancient community such as Chichester, on which many more external eyes were focussed. Despite this, Hussey was nonetheless to secure a series of highly signifcant pieces of art for Chichester, to which we now turn in Chap. 6.

92 WH to Bell, 3 June 1957, at LPL, Bell Papers vol. 204, f. 203. CHAPTER 6

New Visual Art for Chichester

The Purpose of a Cathedral Although the cathedral Hussey found in 1955 was an institution highly conscious of its own history and the shadow it cast, the cathedrals col- lectively were soon to enter a period of intense questioning of their role and purpose. The issue was in part fnancial, which was nothing new. The Deans and Chapters Act of 1840 had sought to place cathedral foundations on a more rational and sustainable fnancial footing.1 That the 1840 Act had not solved the chronic fnancial problems of many cathedrals was soon clear, and the cathedrals as a group were reviewed in the 1920s, which issued in a series of legislative measures between 1931 and 1934.2 By the mid-1950s, these were already felt to be in need of revision, to which task was set a commission of the Church Assembly, which reported in 1961.

1 N. Yates (2004) ‘Change and continuity, 1790–1902’ in M. Hobbs (ed.) Chichester Cathedral. An historical survey (Chichester: Phillimore), pp. 121–122. 2 [Cathedrals Commissioners] (1927) Report of the Cathedrals Commissioners. Part One: Report (London: SPCK). On the successive commissions on the cathedrals, see G. Turner (2011), ‘Cathedrals and change in the twentieth century. Aspects of the life of the cathedrals of the Church of England with special reference to the Cathedral Commissions of 1925, 1958, 1992’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester), passim.

Cathedrals in Modern Life, based on detailed returns from all of the 42 cathedrals, painted a bleak picture of the national scene.3 Most of the parish church cathedrals broke even at least, but at a level of activity that fell some way short of the ideal. Several of the ancient cathedrals were unable even to reach that low benchmark, with several running considerable annual budget defcits. None of these fgures took into account the major periodic expenditure needed to save the buildings from decay. The report led to the Cathedrals Measure of 1963, which made fnancial provision for three members of staff for each cathedral, whose work should be wholly directed to the cathedral, and not to the more general work of the diocese.4 At one level, this gave the cathedrals new strength in diffcult conditions, but it did not address a rather more diffcult question: to which purposes they put this new-found strength? Cathedrals in Modern Life contains a telling phrase which reveals some of the more existential questioning afoot: ‘It could no longer be assumed that the laity in the Church, and perhaps not always the clergy, had such a vital sense of the necessity and importance of Cathedrals in the life of the Church that they would willingly face fnancial responsibilities and sacrifces in order to maintain them.’5 If the clergy and laity were to put their shoulders to the wheel in raising the funds to keep the cathedrals upright, then they needed a clearer idea of what those buildings were for. The report set out some principal areas of ministry in which the cathedrals had a particular role: areas which have been neither substantially added to, nor subtracted from, in writing on the subject since. Some were already central to the cathedrals’ idea of themselves. Architecturally, the cathedrals were ‘a most priceless heritage’; cathedral music was an ‘artistic heritage comparable in quality to the heritage in stone preserved by the buildings themselves.’ As the bishop symbolised the unity of the diocese in person, so did the cathedral in stone; it was both a centre for key events and, in the range and quality of its worship, an ‘inspiration to all the clergy and laity of a Diocese.’6

3 [Cathedrals Commission of the Church Assembly] (1961) Cathedrals in Modern Life. Report of the Cathedrals Commission of the Church Assembly, (London, CIO), passim. 4 P. Welsby (1984) A History of the Church of England, 1945–1980 (Oxford: OUP), p. 162. 5 Cathedrals in Modern Life, p. 4. 6 Cathedrals in Modern Life, pp. 4–5. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 149

The report acknowledged one new aspect of the cathedral’s role that was to become central, if not indeed dominant, by the end of the century: the cathedral as visitor attraction. The numbers of visitors to the cathedrals were already increasing in 1961, and in 1978 one estimate put the total number of visitors to 23 of the 42 cathedrals at 1.1 million in a single August fortnight. ‘If they can be welcomed, shown round, and helped to see the spiritual purpose of a Cathedral’, the report speculated, ‘an evangelistic agency comes into play and this might be of considerable importance.’7 Here Hussey found that his own passion for the arts came into alignment with broader developments in the ways in which the cathedrals sought to communicate with this new and growing constituency. The period during, and immediately following, the war had seen the national church begin to face the need to re-evangelise the population that it had once thought of as already solidly Christian. The 1945 report Towards the Conversion of England prompted the appointment around the country of diocesan missioners: specialists in evangelism with a wider view than individual local clergy, such as Henry de Candole in Chichester. The Mission to London of 1949 attracted an estimated three-quarters of a million people to its various meetings and events.8 Nearly 1.9 million heard the American evangelist Billy Graham in a 12-week period in 1954.9 However, the apparent revival in Anglican fortunes that this activity seemed to promote had lulled some into thinking that, in order to re-evangelise the nation, all that was needed was more of the same: to state the same message again, and more clearly. It was during Hussey’s early years at Chichester that the nature and depth of the crisis facing the churches became apparent. As Callum Brown has shown, the period from 1945 to 1956 actually saw remarkable increases in the statistical indicators of religious observance; but this sharp growth was swiftly reversed by a catastrophi- cally rapid decline between 1956 and 1973.10 Brown located the causes of this change in a discursive revolution, in which successive generations

7 Cathedrals in Modern Life, p. 5. 8 Welsby, Church of England, pp. 45–48. 9 F. Colquhoun (1955) Haringey Story. The offcial record of the Billy Graham Greater London Crusade 1954, (London: Hodder & Stoughton), pp. 231–232. 10 C. Brown (2009) The Death of Christian Britain. Understanding secularisation 1800– 2000, 2nd edn. (Abingdon: Routledge), p. 188; see also C. Field (2015) Britain’s last religious revival? Quantifying belonging, behaving and believing in the long 1950s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), passim. 150 P. Webster of the British simply lost the use of narrative structures in which to relate their lives in Christian terms.11 And within the churches there was a growing consciousness that more of the same message was not the medicine needed after all. Attention centred on the reform of the liturgies that churches used in their worship. When Hussey arrived in Chichester, the Church of England still used a form of worship that was fast approaching its tercentenary: the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. There was a very great attachment to the language of the Book, and to the symbolic weight it bore in Anglican identity. However, some had recognised that it was too much to expect congregations to worship in language structures and thought forms that were not their own. As a result, the Prayer Book (Alternative and Other Services) Measure of 1965 allowed experimental use of new liturgies.12 For those who were cognisant of it, however, the crisis went beyond any reform of the liturgy; all means of possible communication were in question. As F.W. Dillistone, dean of Liverpool, put it: ‘How can the Christian Gospel…a message originating from the pre-scientifc world, be made comprehensible to the ordinary man of the modern technologi- cal age?’13 The crisis went to the heart of the idea of religious language itself. Part of the aim of John A.T. Robinson’s controversial book Honest to God (1963) was to address a profound loss of confdence in the stability of meaning in language, which had a devastating effect on the ability of the Church to express itself at all.14 But for some, there was a solution at hand, in the Church’s musical traditions, its art and architecture, and in the revival of religious drama. If minds could not be reached with words, then perhaps hearts might be moved in these other ways. And, if cathedrals were indeed to be an inspiration to the clergy and laity of their dioceses, the lead in exploiting this wider range of means of communication would need to come from them. This chapter and the one that follows examine Hussey’s artistic response to the challenge articulated in Cathedrals and Modern Life. Chapter 8 returns to the question of how

11 Brown, Christian Britain, pp. 181–186. 12 P. Webster (2015) Archbishop Ramsey. The shape of the church (Farnham: Ashgate), pp. 104–108. 13 F.W. Dillistone (1956) Christianity and Communication (London: Collins), p. 16. 14 See, for example, H.E. Root (1962) ‘Beginning all over again’ in Alec Vidler (ed.) Soundings. Essays concerning Christian understanding (London: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1–19. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 151 far Hussey responded to the other parts of the vision that the report set out. Hussey was amongst the audience at the 1966 Deans and Provosts Conference, held with some symbolic intent at the new Coventry Cathedral, on the theme of ‘Cathedrals as places of learning and infuence in the community’. The visiting speaker was Albert van den Heuvel, youth secretary of the World Council of Churches. Hussey would have nodded in agreement with the statement that ‘we can become creative together with God himself, with whom we are called to be collaborators’, and took copious notes. ‘We live in an age in which very few people speak the same mental language’, argued van den Heuvel; and the Church had committed itself to using only ‘the philosophical language to express its faith. And if it has been willing to use other languages like the poetic one, or the scientifc one, then it always regards these other languages as experiments.’ The church could become what van den Heuvel described as a “Pentecostal Laboratory”, a place ‘in which the Babylonian confusion of speech is redeemed in the language of the Spirit. This does not mean that we only speak one language in the Church; it means that everybody here speaks as it were his own tongue.’ This was diffcult to do in parishes, but was both possible and necessary in the cathedrals. If they could ‘help a few people to integrate poetic language once more with their own language, it would teach them to live the language of art, to hear music and to participate in it, to be dramatic of life.’15 Here then was a theological articulation of the purposes of religious art which translated the thought of the pre- and immediate post-war periods into terms that matched the sense of crisis both within the cathedrals and among the wider churches. Seated amongst his fellow deans, as dean of the cathedral which had engaged earliest and most fully with the contemporary visual arts, Hussey can hardly have heard van den Heuvel’s words as anything other than a vindication of his work. It also provided the theological cover which Hussey himself was not equipped to provide. In 1968, Hussey published a guidebook to the cathedral, in a Pitkin Pride of Britain series that included most of the cathedrals along with other historic buildings.16 Hussey’s enthusiasm for his own projects,

15 The printed papers from the conference, and Hussey’s notes, are at MS Hussey 138. 16 W. Hussey (1968) Chichester Cathedral. (London: Pitkin). 152 P. Webster and relative indifference to some others, is evident in places. The Piper and Sutherland works are both featured, as are the Arundel screen, and Ceri Richards’ copes (the Piper has the only colour illustration); the twelfth-century reliefs are treated at length, and their connection to Henry Moore’s Northampton Madonna noted. In contrast, the Feibusch painting in the baptistry receives only the briefest note, and is omitted from the location plan. Hussey’s oft-repeated understanding of the role of contemporary art also shows through: ‘whenever anything new was required in the frst seven hundred years of the history of the cathedral, it was put in in the contemporary style’ he wrote, introducing the Piper. ‘The builders never went back and copied an old style when it had gone out of fashion and lost its inspiration. What at frst may have seemed to be quite out of keeping with the old was soon seen to ft in quite happily.’17 This much had been Hussey’s understanding since the 1940s. The particular infection of the late 1960s is found in his closing remarks on the purpose of the cathedral, drawn directly from Albert van den Heuvel:

The thinking of the Church, the theology of the Church, has been and still is very largely expressed in philosophical language, which is a very special- ised language and one which is open to misunderstanding and indeed no understanding by many. One of the things we need now is a wide diversity of languages in which the Church can express herself – the scientifc language, the poetic language, the musical language, language of art [sic]. This the cathedral can help to provide, and many so-called casual visitors are seeking for something in a language they can understand.18

This chapter documents Hussey’s most signifcant commissions of visual art for Chichester: an investment of all his energies in one particular idea of the future of the cathedral. It will return in Chap. 8 to the question of whether or not it was the correct investment to have made.

17 Hussey, Chichester Cathedral, p. 12. 18 Hussey, Chichester Cathedral, p. 24. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 153

Graham Sutherland (Again) Hussey’s frst major venture within the cathedral was the reinstatement of the Arundel screen at the entrance to the choir. Made in the late ffteenth century, it had been removed in 1860 and the stones stored and later re-erected in the detached Bell Tower, which stands near the west end of the cathedral. It had been the wish of Duncan-Jones that it should be reinstated, in place of the wooden screen, and Randoll Blacking had prepared plans. In the mind of the Central Council for the Care of Churches, it ought always to have been the frst priority. Others, Lancelot Mason included, had wanted to retain the existing wooden screen, not least because it was a memorial. The death of George Bell, however, called for a memorial to the late bishop, and for this Mason was prepared to relent.19 The Bell-Arundel screen was dedicated in its new location in November 1961. Although not a commission of new work, the reinstatement of the screen shows Hussey’s understanding of internal space. In Blacking’s plans, the two side bays of the screen are both shown partially flled with an altar, and there is a low iron gate across the central bay.20 As reinstated in 1961, all three bays are left empty. As a result, the massive screen clearly marks the spatial division of nave and choir, but the viewer at ground level has clear lines of sight from west to east. After dark from the west door, the colours of John Piper’s tapestry (to which we shall return shortly) may be seen aglow in the distance, drawing the eye to the high altar at which the key work of the building is done in the Eucharist. Prospective architects for the new Coventry Cathedral had been asked not to ‘conceive a building and to place in it an altar, but to conceive an altar and to create a building.’21 The replacement of the screen was one of Hussey’s contributions to the articulation of that vision at Chichester. That understanding of space is key to understanding the second project that reached completion in 1961: the refurbishment of the Mary Magdalene chapel in the cathedral’s south-east corner. Although a relatively small space, enclosed on three sides, the chapel is visible the whole

19 W. Hussey (1985) Patron of Art. The revival of a great tradition among modern artists (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), pp. 100–101. 20 The plans were enclosed with a letter from Potter to Hussey, 25 November 1958, at MS Hussey 165. 21 B. Spence (1962) Phoenix at Coventry (London: Bles), p. 4. 154 P. Webster length of the south aisle of the cathedral from the baptistry in the west: a view Basil Spence thought one of the most beautiful in Europe.22 The chapel had in it a Victorian reredos, and paintings to the left and right, one of which was in a poor condition. The architect Robert Potter, asked in 1957 to advise Hussey on the best course of action, thought that, given its visual prominence, the best option was to clear the whole space and begin again with a single coherent scheme. The reredos was not worthy of the redecoration it would need; one of the paintings was beyond repair; the other could be moved; neither were of any artistic merit, Potter thought.23 More fundamentally, there was an opportunity to be bold, rather than use the derivative work of the frms that made church furnishings. £500 was already pledged by the Friends of the cathedral.24 Of all those Hussey commissioned at Northampton, the two with whom he was to maintain the closest ongoing friendships were Benjamin Britten and Graham Sutherland. The relationship with Britten and Peter Pears was addressed in detail in Chap. 3; the ongoing closeness between Hussey and both Sutherland and his wife Kathleen made Sutherland an obvious choice for Hussey’s frst commission for Chichester: the Noli me tangere that resides in the Mary Magdalene Chapel. Sutherland and Hussey had been in regular contact by letter in the years immediately following the Northampton Crucifxion, exchanging cuttings from newspapers and magazines and arranging photographs for the same.25 It was also at this time that Hussey began acquiring work from Sutherland directly for his own collection. The version of the Crucifxion placed in St Matthew’s was not the only version; Sutherland had made another, of which Hussey took possession at some point in 1947. This remains part of the collection at Pallant House, as does Thorn Head, evidently acquired by Hussey around the same time; in October 1948, Sutherland asked that Hussey have photographs taken of both for a forthcoming book.26 The Sutherlands visited Northampton in

22 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 103. 23 Potter to WH, 21 June 1957, at MS Hussey 165. 24 Potter to William Croome, 12 March 1957, at CERC, CATH/CS/CHI/1. 25 Sutherland to Hussey, 19 September 1947, at MS Hussey 346; Sutherland to Hussey, 12 February 1948, at MS Hussey 346. 26 Sutherland to Hussey, 5 October 1948, at MS Hussey 346. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 155

Image 6.1 Hussey and Kathleen Sutherland on holiday in Austria, late 1950s. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 70

1952 during which Hussey evidently had two further works on view at the vicarage, with a view to buying either or both of them.27 Also in the Pallant House collection is a study made in preparation for the portrait of Winston Churchill commissioned by parliamentarians in 1954; Hussey got his picture, of Churchill’s hand, at some point in early 1955.28 The relationship was not purely that of artist and private patron. Hussey seems to have taken his holidays with the Sutherlands in France, Italy and Austria on a number of occasions during the 1950s, and the

27 The letter refers to an oil painting, which may be Track Junction in the South of France, or Landscape in the South of France, both now at Pallant House: Kathleen Sutherland to Hussey, 21 October 1952, at MS Hussey 346. 28 This was the Study of the Right Hand of Sir Winston Churchill: Sutherland to Hussey, 2 February 1955, at MS Hussey 346. 156 P. Webster friendship seems to have been one of the closest that Hussey had (Image 6.1).29 The mutual trust was evidently such that Hussey felt able to discuss his own sexuality. In September 1957, Kathleen Sutherland wrote that they had been discussing a recent report which she would not name; this was most likely a reference to the Wolfenden Report on the law relating to homosexuality, published that month.30 This trust was important to the progress of what was to become the Noli me tangere painting for Chichester. Unfortunately, Hussey’s papers are uncommonly thin concerning the making of this particular work, probably because much of the detail was handled by Robert Potter, who coordinated the project between Sutherland and Geoffrey Clarke, who designed new candlesticks and an altar rail, while himself designing the new altar. The theme—of the meeting between the risen Christ and Mary Magdalene as mentioned in the Gospel according to John, Chap. 20—was already in Potter’s mind in June 1957, although there was an alternative.31 It was thought that the head of St Richard of Chichester had for a time rested beneath the foor of the chapel, and the cathedral was lacking any visual indication of the connection with its local saint. Might a refurbished chapel be devoted to Richard? Even though the idea was voiced among the clergy, neither Potter nor Hussey seem to have been enthused, and so Mary Magdalene it was.32 At that point, the intention was to provide carved fgures, but by the following year Potter had decided instead on a painting, in order to provide suffcient colour.33 In Patron of Art, Hussey recorded that he had Sutherland in mind from the beginning of his time in Chichester, having thought him very sympathetic at Northampton. It seems probable that holiday conversations in Venice or Menton (the Sutherland’s residence on the French Riviera) would have turned to such a prospect in general terms. Now Hussey saw the opportunity. He recalled mentioning

29 Kathleen Sutherland to Hussey, 2 October 1958, at MS Hussey 345. 30 Kathleen Sutherland to WH, 13 September 1957, at MS Hussey 345. 31 Potter to WH, 21 June 1957, at MS Hussey 165. 32 W.K. Lowther Clarke to WH, 16 July 1956, at MS Hussey 160. 33 D. Coke and R. Potter (1994) ‘The cathedral and modern art’ in M. Hobbs (ed.) Chichester Cathedral. A historical survey (Chichester: Phillimore), p. 270. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 157 the idea to Sutherland early in 1959, and Sutherland frst mentioned it in correspondence in January of that year.34 By August, Potter had sent Sutherland revised plans for the chapel; Sutherland was still keen, but also occupied with work on the tapestry for Coventry, and an exhibition in the USA in November; the autumn was however in view as a time to start work.35 Sutherland visited Chichester with some early sketches, meeting the members of the Administrative Chapter in the Deanery. Hussey recalled that Sutherland won the group over by a combination of his personal modesty and the sincerity with which he approached the problem. Hussey was also reas- sured by the absence of opposition in the chapter, amongst the members of which there were many and varied opinions about art.36 By June 1960, Sutherland had two versions—different solutions to the compositional problem of the subject—of which he included hand-drawn sketches in a letter.37 Sutherland had to grapple with the problem of representing two fgures as a group while one (Christ) is pulling himself away from the other: how should the two fgures be positioned in relation to each other? What should their gestures be?38 Sutherland wanted more time to dwell on the two versions, and to select the most successful one. This, however, meant a delay, and St Richard’s Day 1960, the date that had evidently been fxed for the public unveiling, was only weeks away. Not for the frst time (or the last) Hussey was required to change his plans for a public unveiling, and a less sympathetic patron might have been less accommodating. However, Hussey was able to persuade the Chapter that a delay was necessary, and so it was October when Sutherland brought not one but two fnished paintings to Chichester, having completed both of his solutions that were partially completed in June. After viewing both in situ in the chapel, the slightly larger of the two was selected (Image 6.2).39

34 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 104; Graham Sutherland to WH, 22 January 1959, at MS Hussey 345. 35 Graham Sutherland to WH, 26 August 1958, at MS Hussey 345. 36 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 104. 37 Graham Sutherland to WH, 2 June 1960, at MS Hussey 345. 38 The diffculty of the composition was not lost on Colin Anderson, speaking at the unveiling: Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 110. 39 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 106. 158 P. Webster

Image 6.2 The Mary Magdalene chapel, with Sutherland’s painting, candlesticks by Geoffrey Clarke and the altar by Robert Potter. Image reproduced by kind permission of Chichester Cathedral

Hussey took possession of the second painting for his own collection, but it is not clear whether Hussey paid Sutherland for both. It may be that Sutherland made a gift of it, as he was already working for a greatly reduced fee of £550 at a time when Sutherland was asking his society 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 159 portrait clients for £3000.40 Although it seems not to have damaged the friendship, Kathleen Sutherland felt it necessary gently to remind Hussey in May 1961 that the fee was still outstanding, a month after the unveiling which took place on 5 April, but some six months after the work was fnished. She had not intended to sound grasping, she stressed, but Sutherland had effectively worked for two and a half years without any payment to produce the tapestry for Coventry, and so it was now necessary to be practical and earn some income.41 Compared to the Northampton commissions of the 1940s, the public and critical reception of the Noli me tangere was positive. Eric Newton, already a Hussey ally, thought the picture proved that Sutherland was ‘almost the only living artist capable of expressing the full intensity of a Christian theme…To paint the Son of God momentarily mistaken for a gardener is surely more diffcult than to visualise Christ crucifed or Christ enthroned.’42 The Atticus columnist in the Sunday Times dwelt on the straw hat which the Christ fgure wears (borrowed from the vicar of Trottiscliffe in Kent where the Sutherlands lived).43 Here, Sutherland was placing the Biblical scene in his own environments of rural Kent and southern France in order to work out its implications: Kathleen had modelled for Mary, and their gardener for Christ. Hussey understood the metal stair which Christ ascends, as if towards heaven, to have been inspired by the terraced garden of La Villa Blanche at Menton.44 Sutherland’s garden is not an English one, gentle and lush, but Mediterranean: hotly coloured, and populated with sharp vegetation, reminiscent of Sutherland’s preoccupation with thorns in previous years (Image 6.3). There were some less positive reactions, both local and national, although they were short-lived. The Daily Mail thought the picture ‘bizarre’ and ‘sinister’, and the Chichester press received a small cluster of letters, mostly hostile.45 In 1963, the painting was defaced and

40 R. Berthoud (1982) Graham Sutherland. A biography (London: Faber), p. 231; A. Blakeney (2009) The Friends of Chichester Cathedral, 1939–2009 (Chichester: The Friends of Chichester Cathedral), p. 21. 41 Kathleen Sutherland to WH, 16 May 1961, at MS Hussey 345. 42 E. Newton (1961), ‘Commissions in context’ The Guardian, 7 April 1961, p. 9. 43 Sunday Times, 9 April 1961, p. 9. 44 Hussey, Chichester Cathedral, p. 8. 45 Berthoud, Sutherland, p. 242; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 111. 160 P. Webster

Image 6.3 Noli me tangere by Graham Sutherland. Image reproduced by kind permission of Chichester cathedral. It may be seen in the cathedral which is open daily with free entry 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 161 punctured with a ballpoint pen. Speaking in court the offender, one Mabel Winifred Norris, described her actions as a ‘religious scruple’; the cathedral ‘belongs to the people’.46 Sutherland’s biographer thought that the press reactions might be related to the fact that Mary’s features are strongly Jewish: historically accurate, but by no means the conven- tion in western art. One of the Chichester letter writers was more dis- turbed by her feshy, human fgure, Sutherland’s echo of the medieval depiction of Mary as a repentant prostitute; he had always thought of her as chaste and pure.47 Cheslyn Jones, chancellor of the cathedral, suggested that Mary’s fgure and pose was indeed sexualised; she might have been saying ‘come up and see me some time’ (a famous phrase of Mae West). The suggestion irritated Hussey, and the original context in which the remark was made (a sermon) is now obscure, but the point was more serious than Hussey grasped.48 Why was there a more favourable reception than might have been expected? As Hussey observed, there was the simple matter of Sutherland’s reputation.49 The relatively unknown painter of the Northampton Crucifxion was now the painter of portraits of the political, business and artistic establishment: Churchill, Lord Beaverbrook, Somerset Maugham among them. He was also now a member of the Order of Merit: an appointment made at the discretion of the Queen, and to an order of which there could be only 24 members at any one time. (Clark, Britten and Moore had earlier been similarly recognised, becoming Companions of Honour.)50 In a deferential age, such creden- tials (announced, in Sutherland’s case, in April 1960 while the picture was in progress) would have done much to stife criticism. Hussey also thought that the lack of critical comment was due to the location. Potter’s marshalling of Sutherland, Clarke and his own work is both sympathetic to the chapel and perfectly coherent as an ensemble. Sutherland’s painting also fulflled the requirements both of the viewer from two yards and of being what Hussey later called ‘a kind of heraldic

46 Chichester Observer, 8 February 1963: cutting at Pallant House archive, Hussey fle. 47 Chichester Observer, 25 August 1961: cutting at MS Hussey 489. 48 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 111. 49 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 111. 50 Berthoud, Sutherland, pp. 183–200, 242. 162 P. Webster jewel’ when viewed from the baptistry at the far end of the building.51 Nonetheless, the chapel is a side chapel, in which few services were held, and so no-one would be required to worship in plain view of the painting, should they object. As we shall see below, this was not the case with John Piper’s tapestry. Finally, the reaction may also be explained by the theme. Although there are examples of paintings of the theme, by Rembrandt, Fra Angelico and Titian, they are relatively few in number, when compared with the myriad depictions of the Crucifxion. Kenneth Clark, writing without having seen the fnished picture himself, thought that this presented additional challenges for Sutherland, and that viewers must therefore expect something ‘strange and personal’.52 Be that as it may, an alternative (and indeed mutually compatible) reading might be that Sutherland’s interpretation was always likely to be more acceptable to viewers precisely because it could not so easily be lined up alongside traditional portrayals and found wanting, as had been the case with Henry Moore. The man in the street knew what a Madonna should look like, and a mother and a child; the same could less well be said for Mary Magdalene. The commission was another example of Hussey’s best gifts as a patron. By this point, Sutherland was no novice in working for the churches. As well as the Coventry tapestry and the Northampton Crucifxion, in 1959 he was already in discussion with the Roman Catholic church of St Aidan in East Acton, a suburb in west London, over another Crucifxion to hang behind the altar. (It was completed in 1963.)53 Despite this, Sutherland still felt he came to such projects ‘like a fsh out of water—since we, the artists of to-day are (alas!) not acclimatised at the start.’ Over the years, Hussey had heard a good deal from Sutherland about the diffculties into which the Coventry project had run. In contrast, Sutherland was always intrigued by working for Hussey, ‘so strong is my feeling for your example’.54 Hussey was an

51 Hussey, Chichester Cathedral, p. 8. 52 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 109. 53 Berthoud, Sutherland, p. 250. 54 Sutherland to WH, 22 October 1960, at MS Hussey 345, as given at Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 107. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 163

‘understanding & wise patron—bringing into the world again the old relationship of patron & painter’.55

Geoffrey Clarke Although small in size, Sutherland’s Noli me tangere is highly visible within the cathedral; Moore’s Madonna and Sutherland’s Crucifxion at Northampton both arrest the attention; the John Piper tapestry, to which we shall turn shortly, is the most prominent work of all. But Hussey’s fastidiousness extended also to the smaller details within his churches. At Northampton, he regularly used the staff of the local College of Art to design signs, covers for the parish magazine and programmes for recitals. At Chichester, the designer Reynolds Stone designed the cover for the cathedral’s journals, as well as a slate plaque which still informs visitors to the Close that they are at the gates of the Deanery. Such attention to detail was, for Hussey, a signal to the visitor of something important about the purpose of the church.56 The artist whose work most pervades the cathedral but without drawing attention to itself is that of Geoffrey Clarke. Some ffteen years younger than Hussey, in the early ffties Clarke had been associated with fgures such as Lynn Chadwick in their use of what the critic Herbert Read dubbed ‘the geometry of fear’: the use of spiky, organic forms which could be read as an expression of anger.57 Clarke had contributed several items to Coventry Cathedral, including three windows in the nave and a remarkable cross for the Chapel of the Cross, combining organic thorn-like forms with the shape of the cross made of charred roof timbers.58 Clarke was still studying at the Royal College of Art when the commission for Coventry came his way in 1952, in conjunction with another student, Keith New, and their tutor Laurence Lee.59 In the same year Clarke visited Northampton, having heard from a student that Hussey

55 Sutherland to WH, 14 May 1960, at MS Hussey 345, as given at Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 105. 56 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 129–130. 57 C. Darwent (2014) ‘Geoffrey Clarke obituary’, The Guardian, 6 November 2014, accessed via www.guardian.com. 58 Spence, Phoenix at Coventry , pp. 97–98, 103. 59 Spence, Phoenix at Coventry, p. 51. 164 P. Webster

Image 6.4 The pulpit by Geoffrey Clarke in the nave of Chichester Cathedral, 1960s. The right-hand bay of the restored Arundel screen is visible on the left. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 178

was interested in his stained-glass designs. The two missed each other, to Clarke’s disappointment, since Clarke was very interested in the problem of achieving a way of designing glass that both suited the church and allowed the artist the space to be true to his or her own beliefs.60 It is not clear that anything came of this immediately. (As we shall see,

60 Clarke to WH, 10 July 1952, at MS Hussey 363. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 165

Hussey had other names in mind in regard to stained glass.) By 1959, however, Clarke had been engaged to contribute to the St Mary Madgalene chapel, producing a pair of candlesticks and the altar rail, both in cast aluminium.61 Although in a more subdued form than the Coventry work, the thorn motif in the candlesticks is in dialogue with Sutherland’s wild garden. Hussey also disliked the existing Victorian pulpit in the nave and sought the advice of John Betjeman, who thought he should fnd it hard to say anything in its favour.62 The replacement, dating from 1966, was a collaboration between Clarke and Robert Potter, with Clarke designing and casting aluminium cladding with a bas-relief motif of the cross (Image 6.4). The motif bears some relation with the fèche that sits atop the cathedral at Coventry. Later came a small lectern (1972) and a set of aluminium handles for the new glass doors at the west end. Potter found working with Clarke a joy.63 Hussey thought well enough of both Clarke’s work and his way of producing it that he recommended him to the authorities at Bishop Otter College in Chichester, an Anglican teacher training college engaged in the building of a new chapel. Clarke’s cast aluminium work (completed in 1962) hangs, nine metres tall, on the outside wall.64

John Piper and Ceri Richards Few of the artists whom Hussey commissioned for Northampton had previously shown a signifcant inclination to work for the churches. One exception was John Piper. Already in the late 1930s, Piper’s engagement with the abstraction of international modernism was being tem- pered by a growing interest in English architecture, and medieval churches in particular, focussed by the commission in 1937 from John Betjeman to produce the Oxfordshire volume in the now famous series of Shell Guides. In February 1940, Piper was received into the Church of England, and in April of that year was hired by Kenneth Clark’s War

61 Clarke to WH, 20 January 1959, at MS Hussey 363. 62 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 102. 63 Coke and Potter, ‘Modern art’, p. 275. 64 Clarke to WH, 14 July 1960, at MS Hussey 363; G. Clarke (ed.) (2016) The Bishop Otter Art Collection. A celebration (Bristol: Sansom), p. 58. 166 P. Webster

Artists Advisory Committee as a recorder of bomb damage.65 The result was a series of now iconic depictions of blitzed churches from 1940, including Coventry, the frst studies of which were drawn the morning after the raid that gutted the medieval cathedral. The resulting painting was widely circulated as a postcard by the Ministry of Information, as the ruined cathedral very quickly became part of the symbolic repertoire of the nation. It may have been at this time that Piper became exercised by the possibility of contemporary artists working for the Church, after a meeting of the committee of the Society of Mural Painters. Most likely, the committee had been discussing the competition, announced by George Bell, for a commission to decorate the newly built Bishop Hannington Memorial Church in Hove (won by Augustus Lunn.) According to Betjeman, Piper declared ‘he was going to offer his services free to any bishop who might like to use them.’66 Perhaps the clinching moment for Hussey was a touring exhibition curated by Piper under the auspices of CEMA which opened in May 1943. It would appear that Hussey saw the show at some point during 1944, as a copy of the catalogue is to be found in the papers, although it is not clear where or when. In Piper’s preface, Hussey found a statement of intent very close to his own indeed. The exhibition was the product of a ‘painter who is also a churchman and a lover of churches, old and new’, to show unfamiliar works from past and present in a ‘fresh relationship to the whole tradition of English Church art’, in order that a disconnection between the artist and the Church might be ended:

So there is a gap to be bridged and there are boats to be burned: by the craftsman, the artist, and by the Church itself. Small fresh beginnings have been made, and this exhibition illustrates some of them. It is to be hoped that with practice and trust the artist will regain his confdence in working for the greatest and most fruitful of all patrons in his history, and that the Church will regain its commanding conviction about the arts.67

65 F. Spalding (2009) John Piper, Myfanwy Piper. Lives in Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 105, 158, 178–183. 66 R.C.D. Jasper (1967) George Bell. Bishop of Chichester (London: Oxford University Press), p. 129; Spalding, Piper, p. 172. 67 Piper, foreword to catalogue for the exhibition ‘The artist and the church’, at MS Hussey 180. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 167

It is not clear when the two men were frst in contact. It has been suggested that Piper was invited to the unveiling of the Moore Madonna and Child in 1944, although it would seem that Piper was not able to attend. At some point late in 1945, Piper visited Northampton to make a drawing of St Matthew’s, but not in response to any commission from Hussey, although the two evidently met.68 Certainly by this time, Piper was among the group of artists in Hussey’s mind to commission, and Piper was invited to the unveiling of the Sutherland Crucifxion in 1946, an invitation which he accepted.69 In 1952, Hussey found himself with an offer of a gift from a friend, to the value of about £100, and the idea occurred to him of a new cope: the cloak-like vestment worn by the clergy during the conduct of the liturgy. That autumn, he approached Piper to design it, an offer which Piper accepted with some enthusiasm.70 Precisely how far Hussey was conscious of the fact is not known, but this represented a new facet in the relationship between church and artist, since although there had been some years of experimentation with mural painting and sculpture, the design of vestments remained almost entirely a matter for the craftsman.71 It may have been Piper’s well-established work as a designer for the theatre that suggested him to Hussey’s mind. Piper had worked repeatedly with Britten on designs for his operas, the progress of which comes up often in Hussey’s correspondence with Britten. But the design of vestments presented an unfamiliar challenge, and Piper was to ask Hussey for guidance as to the boundaries of what would and would not be acceptable, and for suggestions of things to read. The infuence of Henri Matisse’s designs for the vestments for the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence is evident—indeed Piper referred to them explicitly as a model— which is an indication of the lack of examples in England on which to draw.72 It was also not at all clear who should make the cope to Piper’s design. Rather than approach any of the existing providers of traditional

68 Spalding, Piper, p. 238; Henry Moore to WH, 24 October 1945, at MS Hussey 328. 69 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 49; Piper to Hussey, 11 November 1946, at MS Hussey 114. 70 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 127; Piper to WH, 2 September 1952, at MS Hussey 365. 71 S. Martin (2016) ‘Designing Bobby Dazzlers. John Piper’s vestments for the church’ in S. Martin (ed.) John Piper. The fabric of modernism (Chichester: Pallant House), pp. 42–45. 72 Piper to WH, 29 December 1954, at MS Hussey 365. 168 P. Webster vestments, the job was given to theatrical costumiers known to Piper, whose inexperience showed in the fact that the cope proved heavy to wear, and some of the silks did not wear well.73 Hussey recalled wearing the cope a few times before leaving Northampton for Chichester in 1955. Here his recollection was faulty, as the correspondence shows that the cope was not fnished until late in 1957.74 In between, Piper also painted St Matthew’s as a private commission for Hussey, in 1956. (Hussey kept the painting for a while before presenting it to the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery.)75 Once at Chichester, the idea of new vestments persisted, although for a while Hussey’s attention was diverted from Piper to the Welsh artist Ceri Richards. There was evidently some feeling among the Chichester clergy that Piper’s cope made their own vestments seem drab in comparison. Traditional ecclesiastical vestments were closely embroidered, with complex patterns in relatively subdued colours; the boldness and simplicity of Piper’s design would certainly have made a stronger impression, particularly when viewed from a distance and in subdued lighting. At the advice, once again, of Kenneth Clark, Hussey was to approach Richards.76 In this case, the relationship between patron and artist had begun earlier through a private purchase of a painting in 1957. Richards was a former colleague of Henry Moore at the Chelsea School of Art, whom Moore regarded highly, and so the introduction may have come that way.77 Although it is not named in the correspondence, the painting in question was most likely Saudade, now at Pallant House.78 (The piece hung on Hussey’s lounge wall for a time.)79 Either at their frst meeting in 1957 or subsequently, Hussey had mentioned the matter of painting

73 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 127. 74 Piper to WH, 25 January 1958, at MS Hussey 365. 75 Piper to WH, 7 August 1955, at MS Hussey 365. 76 O. Matthews (1984) ‘Dean of Chichester. Rev. Walter Hussey’, The Antique Collector (April 1984), p. 62. 77 R Berthoud (2003) The Life of Henry Moore (2nd edn., London: De la Mare), p. 130. 78 Richards to WH, 7 September 1957, at MS Hussey 368; D. Coke and N. Colyer (1990) The Fine Art Collections. Pallant House, Chichester (Chichester: Pallant House) p. 24. 79 B. Norman (1965) ‘The Swinging Dean peps up the Psalms’, Daily Mail, 9 August 1965: cutting at MS Hussey 358. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 169 on religious themes. Shortly after, Richards had painted a Deposition, shown at the Contemporary Art Society exhibition on the ‘religious theme’ in 1958 with which Hussey was involved. There was also a Supper at Emmaus, hung above the altar in the chapel of St Edmund Hall in Oxford, on which Hussey wrote to congratulate him.80 By the end of 1959, the idea of a set of copes for Chichester had been discussed and agreed upon, although work had not yet begun.81 Work began in earnest in the frst months of 1960, and by April, Richards had three possible design ideas for Hussey to approve, one of which was likely to be expensive, and others which were more economi- cal. The most basic design combined a symbol of astral depths with heav- enly bodies spaced around it, and this seems to have been the design with which Richards went on. Hussey thought it ‘an excellent design, utterly new and yet entirely traditional, with the building and its lighting kept frmly in mind.’82 By early 1961, Richards was in discussions with the Bromley College of Art (on the advice of Sir Hugh Casson) to have both copes and hoods made by their more experienced students.83 Work continued throughout the rest of the year; Robert Potter was involved, and Hussey and Richards met several times, including at the unveiling of Sutherland’s Noli me tangere, and at the Kandinsky exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery in London.84 After several delays, the complete set was delivered to Chichester in August 1962. Ceri and Frances Richards visited to see them, and in a characteristic gesture, Hussey took the Richards to the Chichester Festival Theatre production of Uncle Vanya.85 The total cost had been £900, which had been met by the Friends of the cathedral and by a small bequest.86 Chapter 5 noted that Hussey did not waste time in beginning to plan new artistic commissions for Chichester, and one of the earliest involved Piper. Before 1955 was out, Hussey had mooted the possibility of Piper

80 Richards to WH, 11 June 1959, at MS Hussey 368. 81 Richards to WH, 11 December 1959, at MS Hussey 368. 82 Richards to WH, 20 April 1960, at MS Hussey 368; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 128. 83 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 128; Richards to WH, 2 March 1961, at MS Hussey 368. 84 Richards to WH, 26 March 1961 and 5 April 1961, at MS Hussey 368. 85 Frances Richards to WH, 7 September 1962, at MS Hussey 368; Richards to WH, 8 August 1962, at MS Hussey 368. 86 Blakeney, The Friends of Chichester Cathedral, pp. 20–21; Coke and Potter, ‘The cathedral and modern art’, p. 273. 170 P. Webster providing a set of windows at Chichester in collaboration with Patrick Reyntiens. It is not clear which Chichester windows Hussey had in mind. Piper and Reyntiens were on the cusp of completing their frst major commission of stained glass, for Oundle School (completed the following year), and Piper was in principle well-disposed to the idea. However, the pair had just received the commission for the new baptistry window at Coventry Cathedral and another, from Eton College, was in the off- ing.87 The idea lapsed, however, and when Hussey returned to Piper, it was for an altogether different commission: the tapestry behind the high altar, completed in 1966. As noted in the previous chapter, one of Hussey’s earliest schemes, abandoned at that time, was to colour the Sherburne screen that stood behind the high altar. Hussey recalled the whole area of the building as gloomy and undistinguished, with the reredos in front of the screen itself poorly executed and badly proportioned.88 In August 1962, the Pipers visited Chichester, taking in a performance (as Hussey’s guest) at the new Festival Theatre. During the visit to the cathedral itself, Piper had been impressed by Hussey’s achievement in turning Chichester into a pilgrimage church. There was mention of a side altar, but it seems likely that the high altar was in view as well.89 Piper and Robert Potter were in detailed discussions about the latter during 1963, and in January 1964 something very much like the fnal scheme was proposed. Rather than either painting or covering the screen entirely, Piper proposed seven tapestry panels, nestling within the structure of the screen and beneath its seven carved canopies. Hussey responded immediately, and positively, and Piper began to sketch the idea. It would cost perhaps £5000, Piper thought.90 Tapestry as a medium was new both to Hussey and to Piper, and the success of the Chichester tapestry was to lead to numerous commissions from other places. For Hussey, there was more than one example of recent tapestry commissions which may have funded his imagination, and one very close by indeed. Bishop Otter College in Chichester had

87 Piper to WH, 19 December 1955, at MS Hussey 365; Spalding, Piper, pp. 350–353. 88 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 121. 89 Piper to WH, 9 August 1962, at MS Hussey 365. 90 Piper to WH, 26 March 1963; Piper to WH, 24 January 1964; Piper to WH, 1 February 1964, all at MS Hussey 365. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 171 undergone a signifcant period of expansion, resulting in new buildings including a chapel. The architects Bridgwater, Shepheard and Epstein commissioned a tapestry from the French artist Jean Lurçat entitled Creation, Lurçat’s only religious work in England, completed in 1962.91 Hussey must have known the work, and indeed had earlier suggested Geoffrey Clarke to the architects as a candidate to carry out some sculpted work.92 Hussey had other examples of recent ecclesiastical tapestry on which to refect. Most prominent was the massive tapestry of Christ in glory, designed by Graham Sutherland for Coventry Cathedral in 1951 and completed in 1962. (Hussey had some infuence in its genesis, as the architect, Basil Spence, had been impressed by the Northampton Crucifxion.) The project had been fraught with diffculty, the blame for which Sutherland’s biographer distributes evenly between architect, artist and the Coventry authorities.93 Hussey heard rather more of the artist’s side of the argument as the Sutherlands complained to him of the vacilla- tions of the cathedral.94 Although in the end Sutherland was reasonably happy with the result, the critical reception of the tapestry was mixed. Hussey thus went into the Piper project well acquainted with the possible diffculties. Early 1964 was not a good time in Chichester to be raising money for apparently luxurious spending on tapestries. Potter’s frst survey as cathedral architect, completed in 1961, had stressed the urgent need for work on the fabric of the building: there were cracks in the stonework, evidence of settlement, and corrosion due to pollution in the atmosphere.95 As a result, the Sussex Churches Campaign was launched with a fundraising target of £1 million, for the upkeep and building of churches across the diocese; it was thought that the cathedral would need £300,000 in the next decade alone. Nonetheless, Hussey was able to persuade

91 P. Shepheard (1991) ‘Bishop Otter College: the Lurçat tapestry’, in P. Foster (ed.) Chichester Tapestries (Chichester: University of Chichester), pp. 11–15. 92 Clarke to WH, 14 July 1960, at MS Hussey 363. 93 Berthoud, Sutherland, pp. 201–222. On Spence’s impression of the Northampton Crucifxion, and of Sutherland’s part in the diffculties of the project, see Spence, Phoenix at Coventry, pp. 58, 64–65. 94 Sutherland to WH, 13 August 1957, and Kathleen Sutherland to WH, 16 May 1961, both at MS Hussey 365. 95 R. Holtby (1994) ‘The Immediate Past’ in Hobbs, Chichester Cathedral p. 283. 172 P. Webster the Friends of the cathedral not to divert all of their resources to the campaign. The sums in which the Friends could deal were small in comparison, he thought, and local donors would be more likely to support an appeal for a church that was being cared for by its own. The Friends, as a result, committed £6000 to the project, to include a new altar, designed by Potter.96 To begin with, Piper had inclined towards a series of fgures, a development from fgures of Christ in the stained glass at Oundle. Even then, he was acutely aware of the problem of depicting fgures in tapestry in a convincing way.97 Before the meeting of the council of the Friends in April, Piper rather reticently provided Hussey with four sketches, which he thought early and immature. The one that found favour was a treatment of the Trinity, but in a symbolic manner: a return to a language that Piper had used in the 1930s. In this sketch, all the fundamentals of the fnal design are there, although in a less sharply detailed form.98 There was evidently another meeting in October, with the council of the Friends travelling to Piper’s home in Henley to see further sketches. It seems that by this point Lancelot Mason, the archdeacon, had seen the sketches, and was apparently content. Things had changed, however, by the time Piper came to Chichester again in January 1965, with three large paintings of a more elaborated idea, although unchanged in its essentials. In the Trinitarian scheme in the central panels, Mason objected, there was no separate symbol for God the Father, whereas the Son and the Spirit were so represented. He followed up the objection directly with Piper, having consulted three unnamed theologians and found them all in agreement.99 Although Mason was undoubtedly correct theologically, Piper was unnerved and unwilling to compromise: why had Mason not objected months before? The answer is hard to see; Mason was a punctilious character, indeed legalistic, but that would not explain the timing. It is possible that there

96 Blakeney, Friends of Chichester Cathedral, p. 22; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 121. 97 Piper to WH, 1 February 1964 at MS Hussey 365. 98 S. Martin (2016) ‘Problem solving: the Chichester tapestry’ in Martin (ed) Fabric of Modernism, pp. 36–37; Piper to WH, 3 April 1964, at MS Hussey 365. 99 Piper to WH, 30 January 1965, at MS Hussey 365. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 173

Image 6.5 The colours of the Piper tapestry as viewed from the nave through the Arundel screen. Image reproduced by kind permission of Chichester Cathedral were objections in his mind to the whole project, for which the theological point was a pretext. Either way, a solution was found. Piper consulted an old friend, the scholar and priest Victor Kenna, and proposed 174 P. Webster the insertion of a white light, reminiscent of depictions of the name of God in a glory or a sunburst in post-Reformation glass.100 In the meantime, Piper had proposed that the French frm of Pinton Frères be engaged to weave the tapestry. Based in the small town of Felletin, in the Limousin region, the Ateliers Pinton had worked with such fgures as Picasso and Le Corbusier, as well as producing the Sutherland tapestry for Coventry.101 Piper had met members of the frm at the consecration of Sutherland’s tapestry in 1962, and they readily provided an estimate of costs.102 A sample of work was available for inspection in November 1965, and approved. In April 1966 Piper visited Felletin and, with fve panels out of seven completed, thought the tapestry splendid. By July it was fnished, and was unveiled in the cathedral on 20 September.103 The reception of the Piper tapestry demonstrates some differences in contemporary reactions to works of visual art (as opposed to those to modern music), and also some continuity with the situation of the 1940s. The correspondence Hussey received was equally divided between praise and protest. Both kinds of reaction are instructive. One correspondent thought the tapestry ‘glowing & alive & symbolic of what the Church must and should be in this present age. It took away the feeling that Christianity is old & crumbling like the Cathedral.’ But there was also a recognition that a level of diffculty was to be expected with such genuinely new work. ‘We may not perhaps understand all the symbols portrayed’, the writer continued, ‘but then can we understand very much about life in the Twentieth Century.’104 Edward Barnsley, whom Hussey had previously employed in designing new oak furniture for Northampton, wrote expressing his appreciation of the work. Barnsley had been in the minority of the visitors that he had spoken to,

100 Piper to WH, 19 February 1965, at MS Hussey 365; Trevor Brighton, ‘The Piper tapestry’ in P. Foster (ed.) (1991), Chichester Tapestries. 101 Martin, ‘Problem-solving’, p. 38. 102 Piper to WH, 14 September 1964, at MS Hussey 365; Pinton Frères to Piper, 23 September 1964, at MS Hussey 365. 103 Piper to WH, 23 November 1965, 17 April 1966, 26 June 1966, all at MS Hussey 365. 104 Ethel M. Buvyer (Miss) of North Bersted to WH, 23 September 1966, at MS Hussey 366, as cited at Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 126. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 175 he reported, but had been cheered by the fact that the younger people had been rather more positive.105 One of the issues raised was that of cost. Doubt was cast on the expenditure of £6000 on Piper’s work, at a point when the cathedral was also launching an appeal for funds for structural repairs. Hussey jus- tifed the expenditure to the Weekend Telegraph by reason of the need to demonstrate that the cathedral was still a lively institution, and one worth donating to.106 Objections were also raised to the piece itself, on two related but distinct grounds. One episode, shortly after the unveiling, has entered the folklore of the cathedral: of Cheslyn Jones, chancellor of the cathedral, pointedly donning a pair of sunglasses during a service in a silent comment on the colouring.107 Even after ffty years, the colours of the tapestry remain exceptionally vivid, and still uncom- mon in a cathedral setting; the effect in the mid-Sixties must have been startling (Image 6.5). Sharp of mind and quick-witted, Jones was not above some gentle teasing of Hussey, who would have taken the matter very seriously indeed. Jones had several earlier opportunities to object, and so this was probably a wry observation made by means of a jest rather than any great objection, but the point was made. The second objection was on the ground of the symbolism that Piper had employed. One indignant correspondent, one of the Friends of the cathedral, acknowledged that the colours were indeed striking, but thought the language was wrong: more a representation of the confusion of the modern world outside the church than of anything within.108 In iconographical terms, it is hard to make the case that Piper’s symbolism was in any sense worldly. The more signifcant fact is that Piper’s scheme may well have simply been lost on its viewers. The symbolism drew on two schemes—of the four elements, and of the depictions of the four evangelists—the second of which was obscure at best. The identifcation of the four animals in Revelation 4, verses 6–7 with the four evangelists had been made by the ffth century and was common in Romanesque

105 Edward Barnsley to WH, undated, at MS Hussey 366. 106 Edwin Mullins, ‘Weaving a work of modern art’, Weekend Telegraph, 23 September 1966, p. 37; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 121. 107 Interview with David Burton Evans. 108 R.M. Cazalet to WH, 7 January 1967, at MS Hussey 366. 176 P. Webster and Gothic art.109 To churchgoers in the 1960s, however, they were much less familiar than the Madonna and Child that Moore carved, and the Crucifxion and Mary Magdalene that Sutherland had painted. Piper simply seems to have asked the majority of his viewers to work too hard, whether or not they were disposed to make the effort. In the Chichester tapestry, Piper perhaps reached the limit to which symbolic obscurity could be tolerated in the Church of England. The episode also demonstrates the importance of context in deter- mining reactions to religious art. Piper’s window in the baptistry of Coventry Cathedral is every bit as abstract in its conception, if not indeed more so, but it did not attract the same negative reaction. This was in part because stained glass, although traditionally fgurative, is not often the object of concentrated attention; its effect is more diffuse. In addition, the Coventry window does not form the backdrop to the liturgy in the same way the Chichester tapestry does, by virtue of its position in the building. The sensitivity of a piece of art grew in proportion to its physical proximity to the communion table, the primary locus of holiness within the building; there was a similar wariness of popular music specifcally for use in worship, and during the Eucharist in particular.110 The same cathedral Friend thought the tapestry completely altered the atmosphere of the sanctuary, so much so that she could no longer receive communion there.111 Had the tapestry been hung in a side-chapel, the consternation may well have been less. Hussey himself thought that the tapestry had aroused more disapproval than anything else at Chichester, and attributed it to the location: ‘it couldn’t be ignored, but drew the eye to that part of the cathedral, as indeed it was meant to do.’112 Although it still provokes reactions from those encountering it for the frst time, it seems that the cathedral congregation came to accept the work, some speaking rather proudly of ‘our tapestry’.113

109 Brighton, Piper Tapestry, p. 20. 110 I. Jones. and P. Webster (2006) ‘Anglican “Establishment” Reactions to “Pop” Church Music in England, 1956–c.1990’, Studies in Church History 42, pp. 429–441, at pp. 430–431; see also Chap. 7 on Leonard Bernstein and Bryan Kelly. 111 R.M. Cazalet to WH, 7 January 1967, at MS Hussey 366. 112 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 125. 113 Interview with Garth Turner. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 177

Cecil Collins The Hussey Papers are almost silent on the genesis of the next commission of visual art for Chichester: the Icon of Divine Light by Cecil Collins, which was completed in 1973. A Collins scholar has given an account of its inception. Muriel Cox, a member of the congregation at Chichester, had died and her widower, Richard Cox, approached the cathedral in 1972 with an offer to commission an altar frontal for the chapel of St Clement in the south aisle. Muriel Cox had apparently been impressed by Collins’ The Sleeping Fool in an exhibition in 1945, and so her widower mentioned Collins to Hussey as a possible candidate.114 It is probable that Hussey would already have been well aware of Collins, although there are no signs in the papers that he had considered a commission from him before. Hussey travelled regularly from Chichester to London, often taking in an exhibition, and so would have had several opportunities to get to know Collins’ work. A major retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1959 had included several pieces on religious themes, notably the prize-winning painting Christ before the Judge (1958), and two drawings: The Crucifxion (1952) and The Agony in the Garden (1956), the second theme one of those that had been mooted with Graham Sutherland at Northampton. Collins’ work had also often turned to the theme of angels in the 1950s and 1960s, several of which pieces were shown at two London exhibitions in 1971 and 1972.115 Even if he had not seen these solo exhibitions, Hussey certainly would have seen the single Collins piece in the 1958 exhibition staged by the Contemporary Art Society, on the ‘religious theme.’ Although they were by no means very close, Collins was acquainted with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, who were collectors of his work; this could have been what brought Collins to Hussey’s attention.116 Contact was made at some point in 1972, apparently through the coincidence of using the same solicitor. Collins invited Hussey to his exhibition at the Hamet Gallery in late 1972, an invitation which Hussey evidently accepted. Hussey provided the dimensions of the front of the

114 W. Anderson (1988) Cecil Collins. The quest for the great happiness (London: Barrie & Jenkins), p. 106. 115 J. Collins (1989) Cecil Collins. A retrospective exhibition (London: Tate Gallery), pp. 31–33 and passim. 116 Anderson, Collins, pp. 185, 58. 178 P. Webster altar in January 1973, and by August the painting was complete and had been delivered to Chichester. Cox was apparently very pleased with the result, and Hussey also expressed his thanks.117 The painting was dedicated in November 1973. The Icon of the Divine Light has been described as ‘one of the truly profound examples of religious art achieved in this century’: an opinion that is not widely held.118 Something of Hussey’s view of the piece may be gauged by the fact that it is not mentioned at all in his Patron of Art. Hussey did not take up Collins’ suggestion that, instead of being placed on the front of the altar (and thus relatively low down), the painting be mounted on a board behind the altar and thus at a greater height.119 If Hussey was ambivalent about the painting, it is perhaps due to the eclectic nature of Collins’ theology. Tom Devonshire Jones has rightly called him a ‘Christian gnostic’,120 and although Hussey was unconventional in his view of the arts, he was conservative when it came to theology. There is in the Icon a tension between Christian and more pagan themes, and the latter seem, in the end, to be dominant. Christian art had in the past drawn on the sun as an symbol of Christ, the sun of righteous- ness. Collins’ sun, however, was viewed rather differently by at least one member of the cathedral clergy: David Burton Evans thought the piece pagan in inspiration, and had been surprised that Hussey had accepted it.121 Collins’ own notes are only partly successful in remaining within the sphere of what could be described as orthodox. Collins’ vision was of God ‘the Divine Sun, the Renewer of the World, the eternal springtime’, the ‘creative Heart of eternal life… both dynamic and expanding in light, and simultaneously in peace and harmony unifying all things.’122 Whilst not defnitely unorthodox, the quasi-pantheistic terms in which Collins’ thought is expressed were rarely used in Christian theology at this time. As he had in the case of the Piper tapestry, a punctilious theologian such

117 Collins to WH, 12 October 1972; Collins to WH, 2 February 1973; Collins to WH, 26 August 1973, all at MS Hussey 364. 118 Anderson, Collins, p. 106. 119 Collins to WH, 26 August 1973, at MS Hussey 364. 120 T. Devonshire Jones (1994), ‘Priest and Patron’, Art Quarterly of the National Art Collections Fund no.20, pp. 37–39. 121 Interview with David Burton Evans. 122 Typescript notes, as at MS Hussey 364, as quoted at Coke and Potter, ‘Modern art’ p. 278. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 179 as Lancelot Mason (who had died in 1973) might well have asked questions about the doctrine of God that the painting implied. A second reason for Hussey’s ambivalence may have been that this was not his own project. David Burton Evans recalled that the lead had been taken by Keith Walker, precentor of the cathedral, and Hussey was less actively involved. Walker certainly disagreed with the notion that Collins’ work was in any way unorthodox: the Icon was ‘wholly illustra- tive of Christian doctrine’, he argued some years later, ‘while persons of other faiths or none can respond profoundly to it.’123 In 1977 Collins was approached again in relation to a planned painting for the shrine of St Richard in the retroquire. The Hussey Papers are again silent on the issue, and it may be that this too was a project led by Walker rather than Hussey. It was certainly Walker who presented a sketch to the meeting of the chapter in April 1977, during Hussey’s last weeks as dean, having secured the support of an anonymous donor for the projected cost of £3000. However, the project was abandoned shortly afterwards.124 This may have been due in part to Robert Potter’s view, which he expressed to Hussey in May. Collins had apparently wanted to enclose the picture, creating the impression of a shrine; Potter thought this impracti- cal in the space available and the design incompatible with the Chagall, soon to be installed. Potter was also out of sympathy with the symbolism, which would be contentious, he thought.125 Walker later wrote of Collins’ ‘shock and disappointment’ that his work, the Icon of Divine Love, had not found its place in Chichester, and was anxious that Collins’ relationship with the Church be continued in another way.126 Walker later commissioned Collins to design stained glass for his church of All Saints in Basingstoke in 1985, this time to a scheme derived explicitly from the Islamic mystical tradition of the Sufs.127 It was not until 1985 that the retroquire at Chichester was augmented by a tapestry by Ursula Benker-Schirmer.

123 K. Walker (1990) ‘Visual art in churches in England in recent times’ in J. Robinson (ed.), The Journey. A search for the role of contemporary art in religious and spiritual life (Lincoln: Lincolnshire County Council and Redcliffe Press) pp. 104–110, at p. 109. 124 Coke and Potter, Modern Art, p. 278; WSRO, Cap 1/3/19 (Act Book of the Dean and Chapter of Chichester 1976), meeting of 26 April 1977, at p. 170. 125 Potter to WH, 13 May 1977, at MS Hussey 165. 126 Walker, ‘Visual art’, p. 109. 127 Anderson, Collins, p. 109. 180 P. Webster

Marc Chagall On his arrival at Chichester, Hussey had begun to think more or less immediately of new stained glass for the cathedral, although it is not clear which windows he had in mind. He was, of course, constrained by which windows might most easily be replaced, either by reason of cost or the attachment of the cathedral community to the existing glass. The Chagall window, unveiled in 1978, is located in a curiously obscure area of the building. Clarke’s pulpit faces out into the nave, and his door handles are on the west door through which visitor and worshipper alike enter the building; Sutherland’s Noli me tangere is visible from the full length of the south aisle; the colours of Piper’s tapestry frame the high altar, the focus of the central liturgical work of the cathedral, and are visible from the west end. Cecil Collins’ work, although in a side chapel, is nonetheless part of the altar. By contrast, the Chagall window is tucked away in the wall of the north quire aisle, and so the visitor must venture deep into the building to fnd it. As Robert Holtby, Hussey’s successor as dean, noted in his sermon at the service of dedication, it is also all but invisible from the outside.128 Inside, it is the frame or backdrop to no liturgical action, being connected to none of the chapels and their altars. As such, of all the artistic work in the building, it is most like a painting in a gallery: an object for personal viewing and contemplation, not a companion to the collective action of the congregation as the Body of Christ as it worships (Image 6.6). In one sense, this more detached location is congruent with the work itself, a work of art in a church refecting on the theme of the arts in the Church. The theme of the 150th psalm was suggested by Hussey in late 1976. As Paul Foster has observed, the psalms were, of course, the common property of the Christian Hussey and Chagall the Jew.129 But the subtitle, ‘The arts to the glory of God’, suggests that the project was also a gloss on Husssey’s career, which took on a valedictory quality as retirement approached. ‘True artists of all sorts, as creators of some of the most worthwhile of man’s work, are well adapted to express man’s worship of God’, he wrote to Chagall. ‘I can imagine a window

128 R. Holtby (2002) ‘The Service of Dedication’ in P. Foster (ed.) Chagall glass at Chichester and Tudeley (Chichester: University of Chichester), p. 19. 129 P. Foster (2002) ‘The commissioning’ in P. Foster (ed.) Chagall glass at Chichester and Tudeley (Chichester; University of Chichester), pp. 12–13. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 181

Image 6.6 The window by Marc Chagall in the north quire aisle showing a variety of these artistic activities all caught up in a great act of worship—Psalm 150.’ Hussey should have been very happy to see such a thing, since ‘it has been the great enthusiasm of my life and work to commission for the Church the very best artists I could, in painting, in sculpture, in architecture, in music and in literature.’130

130 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 142. 182 P. Webster

In 1948 Chagall, after peripatetic decades in Russia, Germany, France and the USA, had returned to France where he would stay for the rest of his life. This late period in the artist’s work, which was to last for three decades, was marked both by a return to the Biblical subjects of Chagall’s childhood in Russia, and a move into new media: in particular, stained glass. He visited the cathedral at Chartres in 1952 to study the windows, and in 1959 received his frst commission for new glass for a church building: the cathedral at Metz. Several other such commissions were to follow; particularly notable were the twelve windows for the synagogue of the medical centre at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, completed in 1961. These windows formed the basis of a record-breaking exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, preceded by a similar show at the Louvre in the summer of 1961.131 Hussey visited Paris to see the Louvre exhibition and was impressed by Chagall’s handling of colour. This impression was shared by ‘sensitive and expert friends’, one of whom may well have been John Piper, who had been impressed by the Chagall windows at Tudeley in Kent in 1967.132 The other such friend may have been Robert Potter, since it was Hussey who had recommended Potter as architect to Lady d’Avigdor Goldschmid, in the memory of whose daughter the Tudeley windows were made.133 Others were less sure. In 1970 Hussey sought the advice of Edwin Mullins, art critic of the Sunday Telegraph, who thought rather too much attention was being paid to both Piper and Chagall and suggested several other names, including Ceri Richards, Patrick Heron, Bridget Riley and Richard Smith.134 But by this time Hussey had approached Chagall; by October 1969, Chagall was considering the idea seriously with the maker of all his glass, Charles Marq, after a visit to Chichester, possibly in connection with the unveiling of the Tudeley windows in 1967.135

131 J. Wullschlager (2008) Chagall. Love and Exile (London: Allen Lane), pp. 477–478, 490, 492–495. 132 Piper to WH, 19 November 1967, at MS Hussey 365. 133 Coke and Potter, ‘The cathedral and modern art’, p. 330, n. 56. 134 Mullins to WH, 29 January 1970, at MS Hussey 423. 135 Valentina Chagall to WH, 27 October 1969, at MS Hussey 359; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 138. The dating of Hussey’s frst approach is unclear, as neither his letter nor Vava Chagall’s response have survived. Hussey refers to the elapse of ‘a year or two’, suggesting that the approach was made sometime after the Tudeley windows were unveiled. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 183

Hussey was accustomed to waiting for his schemes to come to frui- tion, but the silence that then ensued must have tried even his patience. In 1975 he wrote again, stressing that time was now short, as he was to retire in 1977. Madame Chagall replied that she was to meet with Marq.136 The latter and his wife Brigitte then came to Chichester in April 1976, met with cathedral staff and inspected the site. Chagall was ft and active, and his wife was keen for him to take on the commission, but there would be a further delay. Another meeting with Marq later in the year revealed that Chagall was having diffculty getting started; would Hussey go to see him?137 Hussey described his diffculties in getting to France on December 14th, and in fnding the Chagall’s home: a sorry tale of fight delays, linguistic incomprehension and wrong directions. Once there, he and Chagall conversed over a full-size drawing of the window, with Madame Chagall interpreting in the company of the Marqs. Chagall asked how Hussey imagined the window; Hussey rather diffdently ventured the idea of an array of fgures representing the various arts, arranged around a central fgure. It should also have the ‘rich and luscious colours’ that Hussey had been so impressed by in the Louvre. Chagall seemed to like the idea, and indeed the fnal design was along these lines.138 This meeting seems to have released Chagall’s thinking. The sketches were begun in January, and a maquette had been made by March. Marq sent a colour photograph of the maquette, stating that the glass work could not be fnished until the summer, and possibly rather later, as a particular kind of red glass was only produced by the manufacturers at St Just twice a year.139 Now clear that the window would not be installed before he retired, Hussey resolved to move the matter as far on as it could be. The scheme was frst reported in the minutes of the Dean and Chapter in March, and the design accepted on the basis of the photograph, apparently without dissent.140 Both Potter and Eric Brooks, the Clerk of the Works, approved the design: ‘happiness and satisfaction all

136 Valentina Chagall to WH, 22 November 1975, at MS Hussey 359. 137 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 139. 138 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 140–141. 139 Marq to WH, 23 March 1977 and 7 April 1977, both at MS Hussey 359. 140 At a meeting on 29 March 1977: WSRO, Act Book of the Dean and Chapter, Cap 1/3/19, p. 162. 184 P. Webster round’.141 Even so, the window was not to be installed for over a year; it was unveiled by the Duchess of Kent in October 1978. One critic has described the Chagall window as Hussey’s ‘crowning achievement’ which ‘immeasurably enriched the Cathedral’. Kenneth Clark thought it a ‘triumph’.142 How signifcant is the Chagall window, in broader art historical terms and in the history of English patronage? Although not a particularly early example of Chagall’s glass, it is one of only two Chagall works in English churches, and the only one in a cathedral. However, the sequence of twelve windows at Tudeley is on a much larger scale, and was commissioned earlier (although the whole sequence unfolded over several years, between 1967 and 1985). The Chagall commission shows the limits of Hussey’s engagement with the very contemporary in art as he had grown older. The commissions of Moore and Sutherland at Northampton were of relatively unknown young artists by a young provincial priest, which provoked scandalised reactions amongst press and public. The Chagall commission is by one old man of an even older man, who was still producing fne work but had long since ceased to be in critical favour. The window provoked no particularly adverse reaction; there was little to fear from Chagall in 1978. This fts the broader pattern of Hussey’s thinking in his last years at Chichester, since there were two other artists of an older generation whom Hussey tried and failed to commission. One was Barbara Hepworth, approached in 1973 for an unspecifed project, at the age of 70 and already a Dame.143 The other was Henry Moore, from whom Hussey had variously wanted a font and a stone cross. Hussey had understood that he had a frm enough commitment in the case of the font to let it be known publicly, but it was not in fact to materialise.144 Chagall’s biographer has shown that Chagall’s popular appeal in post- war Europe was in large part due to his eschewing of the kind of abstraction to which fgures such as Mark Rothko had turned: Chagall’s was

141 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 144. 142 Coke and Potter, ‘The cathedral and modern art’, pp. 278, 279; Clark to Hussey, 2 June 1977, at MS Hussey 401. 143 Hepworth to WH, 13 June 1973, at MS Hussey 413. 144 Moore to WH, 7 June 1973, at MS Hussey 331; L. Mason (2007) ‘Walter Hussey’ in Foster (ed.) Chichester Deans. Continuity, Commitment and Change at Chichester Cathedral, 1902–2006 (Chichester: University of Chichester), p. 142. 6 NEW VISUAL ART FOR CHICHESTER 185

‘a narrative art that met the psychological needs of the age and gave pleasure and consolation as no other visual artist of his stature did at that time.’145 Like Hussey, Kenneth Clark saw something in Chagall that was missing in the contemporary art of the 1960s with which he found himself increasingly out of sympathy. A few years earlier, in 1960, it had been Clark who delivered an address at the presentation of the Erasmus Prize jointly to Chagall and Oskar Kokoschka, which he entitled ‘Two Human Painters in the Age of Abstraction.’146 While during the war Clark had been a vigorous supporter of contemporary British art, by the 1960s he was increasingly left behind by the direction that art was taking, and the same may be said of Hussey. By the mid-1970s, Hussey could see no contemporary artist which he might commission, and as such, the Chagall commission is a remarkably conservative one. Chagall was also now a very expensive man to hire; the eventual cost of the commission was in excess of £20,000, including glass and metal work, transport and assembly, not to mention fees and expenses for Chagall and Marq.147 For previous commissions, Hussey had been supported fnancially either by a collecting box, as at Northampton, or by the private funds of a donor connected with the church (as with Moore at Northampton and Collins at Chichester). The Friends of the cathedral had also funded the Sutherland painting, Ceri Richards’ copes, and the Piper tapestry. In the case of Chagall, Hussey had assured the chapter that he would not be calling on either chapter funds, or monies destined for the restoration of the cathedral.148 Not only that, but he had also undertaken not to approach any Chichester people who had not yet contributed to the restoration appeal, or any trusts and charities that might support it. Hussey was thus obliged to seek the aid of trusts that special- ised in art, with or without any particular connection with the churches. The target was met, with a signifcant contribution from Hussey himself (£4000), as well as public funds from the Arts Council; the chapter

145 Wullschlager, Chagall, p. 486. 146 Wullschlager, Chagall, p. 487. 147 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 143. 148 WSRO, Cap 1/3/19, Act Book of the Dean and Chapter, 1976, meeting of 5 April 1977, p. 163. 186 P. Webster itself met the costs of the unveiling ceremony along with various sundry expenses, less than 10% of the total.149 In this, Hussey moved some way from his earlier model of funding, by which a local church community commissioned a work of art and took ownership of it by fnding its own resources to cover the costs. As such, he had moved closer to the model of church patronage that later came to prevail.

149 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 144; Coke and Potter, ‘The cathedral and modern art’, p. 331, n. 66; Clifford Hodgetts to WH, 31 January 1979, at MS Hussey 360. CHAPTER 7

Chichester Music

Although they began later than the major commissions of visual art, Hussey also commissioned a series of pieces of new music for Chichester. Key to his success was the partnership he formed with the cathedral organist, John Birch. Replacing the aged Horace Hawkins, Birch arrived in Chichester in 1958, having been organist of All Saints’, Margaret Street in London, a prominent Anglo-Catholic parish. He was also well connected, having served as sub-organist for the Chapels Royal, and as a regular broadcast performer for the BBC, at All Saints’ and with the London Philharmonic Choir.1 Birch recalled that Chichester had felt remote from the musical life of London, and it seems to have enjoyed no particular musical reputation (as opposed to the liturgical renown that Duncan-Jones had developed.) Alan Thurlow, Birch’s successor in 1980, had the impression that it was Birch who had put Chichester ‘on the map’, and that he had much to live up to.2 Part of the growing profle of Chichester was the product of new commissions, as we shall see. But Birch also acted to raise the standard of the choir, with the help of Lancelot Mason. By focussing on attracting young choral singers from Oxford and Cambridge, to sing and also

1 Radio Times, 1810, 18 July 1958, p. 20; Radio Times, 1753, 14 June 1957, p. 47. 2 J. Birch and A. Thurlow (2004) ‘Music at the Cathedral. An interview with John Birch and Alan Thurlow’ in P. Foster (ed.) Chichester and the Arts 1944–2004 (Chichester: University of Chichester) pp. 110, 128.

© The Author(s) 2017 187 P. Webster, Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain, Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-36910-9_7 188 P. Webster to teach at the Prebendal School or other local schools, Birch had at one time ‘six of the best singers that any cathedral had’. Birch also oversaw, with Hussey’s agreement, a rationalisation of the fnances of the boy choristers in order to offer scholarships for the boys’ subsequent education, in order to boost recruitment of singers.3 From the early 1960s Chichester became a regular subject of BBC broadcasts, both services and organ recitals. In 1961, the choir was the English representative in a European Broadcasting Union sequence of Christmas music, and was one of the choirs featured in a series introduced by John Betjeman in 1966. BBC television visited in 1967 to make a documentary about the life of a boy chorister.4 Birch remembered his time at Chichester as very happy, and his relationship with Hussey as the envy of cathedral organists elsewhere. Hussey had given him a free hand in the cathedral, and also to pursue other musical activities in London and elsewhere, but without allowing Birch to forget where he properly belonged. For this fnely struck balance, Birch was grateful.5 On arriving in Chichester, Birch had been ready to relinquish those other activities, but Hussey had dissuaded him: there was, he thought, not enough in Chichester to fully occupy a bach- elor. That Hussey may occasionally have regretted his advice is evident in an anecdote, told at Birch’s funeral in 2012. The cathedral choristers were wont to refer to their organist as ‘God’, and one day Hussey was asked, ‘Excuse me, Mr Dean, do you know where I might fnd God?’ ‘God is everywhere’ replied Hussey: ‘Mr Birch is everywhere except Chichester.’6 David Burton Evans remembered the relationship slightly differently, recalling that Hussey was reluctant to challenge Birch when they disagreed.7 But overall, the relationship was an effective one, aided by considerable personal affnities. Both were bachelors, with strong con- nections in the wider musical world, and regular visitors to London to

3 Birch and Thurlow, ‘Music at the Cathedral’, pp. 111, 113–115. 4 ‘A festival of carols’, Radio Times 1989, 21 December 1961, p. 15; ‘English cathedrals and their music’, Radio Times, 2246, 8 December 1966, p. 48; ‘Angel Voices’, Radio Times, 2354, 19 December 1968, p. 7—the flm was made the previous year. 5 Birch to WH, 27 July 1977, at MS Hussey 108. 6 Sermon by Nicholas Frayling, Hussey successor but two as Dean, at Birch’s funeral in 2012, at http://www.chichestercathedral.org.uk/, accessed 9 September 2016. 7 Interview with David Burton Evans. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 189 pursue those interests; both were fastidious about the standards of performance and ceremony in the liturgy; both were private collectors of art. In this last area, Hussey seems to have advised Birch on his collecting; in 1963, Hussey approached John Piper regarding a possible Birch purchase of a drawing.8 Although Birch was not the easiest character to get to know well—he was spoken of as ‘well defended’—Hussey succeeded in penetrating the veil.9

Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms The commissioning of the Chichester Psalms of 1965 by Leonard Bernstein serves as both counterpoint and contrast to the commissions already dealt with here, and indeed appears as something of an anomaly. The sequence of Northampton commissions had all been from British composers, or non-British composers based in the UK. They had all been relatively small in scale—anthems, for the limited forces of choir and organ, and designed for performance during a service of worship. Whilst all by contemporary composers, all were very clearly within the idiom of ‘serious’ music, albeit in the subgenre that church music tended to constitute. To explain the choice of Bernstein, we must frst look at two changes in Hussey’s working context. Hussey’s last commission for Northampton had been in 1954, and he had apparently not paid as much attention to new music in his frst years in Chichester as he had to the fabric of the building and its decoration. In the meantime, English church music had been plunged into a period of intense controversy and self-examination after the publication of the Folk Mass by Geoffrey Beaumont in 1956. This was followed by an unprecedented profusion of experiments in church music in popular styles and with different instrumentation. Reactions to these experiments varied. Some rejected such music as (variously) unworthy, or of insuffcient quality to be given as an offering in worship, or as foreign in prov- enance, or as tending to the encouragement of licence amongst those who heard it. A second strand of reaction was to welcome the retransla- tion of the church’s message into a contemporary language. Others still, whilst recognising the indifferent musical quality of much of the work in

8 John Piper to WH, 26 March 1963, at MS Hussey 365. 9 Frayling, ‘Funeral sermon for John Birch’. 190 P. Webster new styles, hoped that it might nonetheless be effective in reviving the church’s apparently faltering mission.10 Although the debates touched each other only rarely, similar questions were being asked about the visual arts. The reactions to the Chichester Psalms show several of these elements. New in the early 1960s, and particular to Chichester, was the annual Southern Cathedrals Festival. In many ways similar to the more famous Three Choirs Festival, the event had begun twice and foundered twice in the early twentieth century, before being revived in 1960 by Hussey and John Birch, in partnership with their counterparts at Salisbury and Winchester. Although the precise pattern varied, in general the festival consisted of the usual sung services of a weekend supplemented by a number of concerts. These helped cover the costs, but also allowed the combined choirs the opportunity to perform works on a larger scale not usually possible for each choir alone.11 The Three Choirs festival also had a long history of commissioning new pieces of music, by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and many others. In this light, in 1963 Hussey and John Birch were looking for a name to approach. Bernstein’s musical West Side Story had frst been performed in the UK in 1958, in Manchester and then London with the original Broadway cast.12 The show proved so popular that it ran at Her Majesty’s Theatre until the summer of 1961. Such was its popularity that the 1961 flm version was chosen for a royal performance before Queen Elizabeth II in February 1962, the frst such performance in four years.13 One of Birch’s teaching colleagues at the Royal College of Music sat in the orchestra pit for several successive performances during a later tour, so taken was he with Bernstein’s music. Not only did the work have popular appeal. For Birch, it seemed ‘suddenly that here was the last opera that Puccini hadn’t written—it seemed a natural progression straight through.’14 In the UK, still only recently emerged from post-war austerity, Bernstein, the wealthy and famboyant conductor from New York, had

10 I. Jones and P. Webster (2006) ‘Anglican “Establishment” Reactions to “Pop” Church Music in England, c.1956–1991’ in K. Cooper and J. Gregory (eds.) Elite and Popular Religion (Studies in Church History 42), pp. 429–441. 11 Birch and Thurlow, ‘Music in the Cathedral’, pp. 125–127. 12 ‘American Musical for London’, The Times, 26 September 1958, p. 16. 13 ‘Film chosen for royal performance’, The Times, 29 November 1961, p. 15. 14 Birch and Thurlow, ‘Music at the cathedral’, p. 121. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 191 star quality. Hussey had the opportunity to see something of the star in his home environment. A year or two earlier (the dating is unclear), Hussey had spent some time in New York and, through Bernstein’s doctor, Cyril ‘Chuck’ Solomon, (a friend of Hussey’s host), had attended a New York Philharmonic rehearsal and was briefy introduced to the maestro at the podium.15 Nothing followed from this initial meeting until late 1963, when Hussey and Birch fell to thinking about the 1965 festival. Birch thought a piece ‘in a slightly popular style’ (Hussey’s words) would be appropriate, but their accounts differ as to who frst thought of Bernstein. Birch recalled that Hussey thought Bernstein too busy and that he would never accept.16 In this, Hussey was realistic. Bernstein was frmly established as one of America’s foremost conductors, both with the enormous success of West Side Story, and in his more ‘serious’ compositions. However, so occupied was he with conducting that he had completed only one composition since 1957, and had no established body of religious music behind him of which Hussey was likely to be aware.17 He was also a Jew. Apparently prevailed upon by Birch to try, against the odds, Hussey wrote to Bernstein on 10 December 1963. Although there is no evidence, it is tempting to speculate that this was prompted by the fact that Bernstein’s Kaddish Symphony was to be premiered that very day in Tel Aviv. Hussey outlined the nature of the event, the composition of the three choirs, and mentioned the Moore and Britten compositions for Northampton. The festival was ‘concerned to a great extent with the wealth of music written for such choirs over the centuries’, he wrote, ‘but I am most anxious that this should not be regarded as a tradition which has fnished, and that we should be very much concerned with music written today.’ The suggestion for a text was the second Psalm, either unaccompanied or with orchestra or organ. There would be a fee, ‘to the best of our resources’.18

15 W. Hussey (1985) Patron of Art. The revival of a great tradition among modern artists (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p. 112. 16 Birch and Thurlow, ‘Music at the Cathedral’, p. 121. 17 H. Burton (1994) Leonard Bernstein (London: Faber), p. 258. 18 Hussey to Bernstein, 10 December 1963, at Letters, p. 457. Both sides of the correspondence are also reproduced in P. Laird (2010) The Chichester Psalms of Leonard Bernstein (New York: Pendragon), p. 20 and ff. 192 P. Webster

The letter reached Bernstein in New York via Chuck Solomon, and Bernstein replied almost immediately, in January 1964. He professed himself honoured by the invitation, and interested in Psalm 2, although he wanted to remain free to set something else. Bernstein was also unsure whether he would be able to meet the deadline of the summer of 1965.19 Hussey replied, clarifying that it had to be 1965 or much later, due to the rotation of the Festival between the three cathedrals; a different choice of text would also be agreeable. Hussey wrote again in August with further details of the choirs, and of the available orchestra.20 This was to be the Philomusica of London, the ensemble formerly known as the Boyd Neel Orchestra, which had given a concert in Northampton for St Matthew’s Day 1953. Before this point in time, Bernstein had little exposure to the English cathedral tradition or to liturgical music in general. Despite this, Hussey was keen to stress that Bernstein should not feel hemmed in by the tradition. As well as maintaining the traditional repertoire, the Festival ‘must also provide new works in new idioms to keep the tradition really alive. I hope you will feel quite free to write as you wish and will in no way feel inhibited. I think many of us would be very delighted if there was a hint of West Side Story about the music.’21 In a later letter, he added that ‘the work would not be performed during any sort of religious service and I frmly believe that any work which is sincere can suitably be given in a cathedral and to the glory of God.’22 By December, Hussey had heard nothing more directly from Bernstein since February and was beginning to become anxious. Could Bernstein let him have at least a title and a description, he wrote? It would very soon be necessary to make announcements. ‘I have a horrid fear that you will be regarding me as an arch nuisance’, he added, ‘but I am most eager that we should have the work,…in time to learn and rehearse it properly before the Festival.’23 February 1965 came and still no news; now the publicity could wait no longer, and John Birch was

19 Bernstein to WH, 30 January 1964, at MS Hussey 357. 20 Hussey to Bernstein, 10 February 1964 and 14 August 1964, at N. Simeone, ed. (2013), The Leonard Bernstein Letters (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 461–462. 21 WH to Bernstein, 14 August 1964, at Bernstein, Letters, pp. 461–462. 22 WH to Bernstein, 22 December 1964, at Bernstein, Letters, p. 463. 23 WH to Bernstein, 22 December 1964, at Bernstein, Letters p. 463. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 193 pressing Hussey ‘constantly’ for the necessary information, so Hussey wrote once again.24 This time Bernstein replied promptly, having found a solution. It is not clear whether Hussey ever knew it, but the Chichester Psalms were a means for Bernstein to salvage something from a sabbatical year from the New York Philharmonic that had gone wrong. Bernstein’s project for his sabbatical had been a musical version of Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth, on which he had spent several months in the autumn of 1964, but which was abandoned late in the year. ‘A dreadful experience, the wounds still smarting’ he wrote in January 1965. ‘I am suddenly a composer without a project, with half that golden sabbatical down the drain.’25 On 25 February, Bernstein wrote to say that he had been on the verge of disappointing Hussey when ‘suddenly a conception occurred to me that I fnd exciting’: a suite of psalms—three complete with extracts from another three—all in their original language: ‘I can think of these Psalms only in the original Hebrew’.26 Bernstein was able to describe the music for these Psalms of Youth as ‘all very forth- right, songful, rhythmic, youthful’ because much of it had already been written for The Skin of Our Teeth. All the basic melodic material was in fact derived from the musical, with Bernstein able to fnd Psalm texts to substitute for the musical’s libretto. By some remarkable coincidence, Bernstein had also been able to reuse a chorus cut from West Side Story; a fght scene with the lyrics ‘Mix—make a mess of ‘em! Make the sons of bitches pay’ became ‘Why do the nations so furiously rage together?’ in the second movement.27 Hussey’s ‘touch of West Side Story’ was much more than he could have expected. Having established with Hussey that there would be no ‘ecclesiastical’ objections to the use of Hebrew, Bernstein began work in earnest, and by early May the piece was fnished and the choral parts on their way. ‘I am pleased with the work,’ Bernstein wrote, ‘and hope you will be, too; it is quite popular in feeling (even a hint, as you suggested, of West

24 WH to Bernstein, 5 February 1965, at Bernstein, Letters, p. 465. 25 Bernstein to David Diamond, 28 January 1965, at Bernstein, Letters, p. 464–465. 26 Bernstein to WH, 25 February 1965, at Bernstein, Letters, p. 466. 27 Burton, Bernstein, p. 348; the Hebrew text of Psalm 2, verse 1 is ‘Lamah rag’shu goyim/Ul’umim yeh’gu rik’; those who have sung the piece will immediately see the correspondence in verbal rhythm. 194 P. Webster

Side Story), and it has an old-fashioned sweetness along with its more violent moments.’ The Psalms of Youth title had now been dropped, in favour of Chichester Psalms—the piece was much too diffcult, Bernstein thought, to be badged as a piece for young performers. Would Hussey object, he asked, if the piece was given its frst performance in New York a few weeks earlier than at Chichester?28 When the letter arrived, Hussey was unwell—he lost fve weeks due to a cerebral thrombosis, although the prognosis was good—and so the letter was replied to by the cathedral precentor. Deryck Hutchinson thought Hussey would be most disappointed, especially as the performance had already been advertised as the premiere. After some consultation with Birch, Hussey relented; he was pleased with the new name and (understanding better than Hutchinson the pressures under which a composer worked) wanted to keep Bernstein happy, particularly as the matter of the fee was yet to be settled.29 The British premiere was given by the combined choirs of Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester cathedrals on July 31st 1965, as part of that year’s Southern Cathedrals Festival. ‘I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am’ wrote Hussey: ‘We were all thrilled with them. I was specially excited that they came into being as a statement of praise that is oecumenical. I shall be terribly proud for them to go around the world bearing the name of Chichester.’30 Roger Wilson, bishop of Chichester, found the Psalms a revelation; unsurprisingly so, as Bernstein’s psalms were far from the tradition of daily Anglican chanting of the Psalms in the language of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Wilson found them (as Hussey reported) ‘joyous & ecstatic & calm & poetic’, a vision of David dancing before the Ark.31 Bernstein also thought the performance had gone well, although not without alarm. The orchestra had only begun to rehearse on the day of the performance, perhaps due in part to the fact that their parts were still being copied, in New York, on 30 June. ‘The choirs were a delight!’ Bernstein wrote to his secretary. ‘They had everything down pat, but the orchestra was swimming in the open sea. They simply didn’t know it. But somehow the glorious acoustics of

28 Bernstein to WH, 11 May 1965, at Bernstein, Letters, pp. 468–470. 29 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 115; Deryck Hutchinson to Bernstein, 19 May 1965, at MS Hussey 357. 30 Hussey to Bernstein, 1 August 1965, at Bernstein, Letters, p. 472. 31 Hussey to Bernstein, 1 August 1965, at Bernstein, Letters, p. 472. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 195

Chichester Cathedral cushion everything so that even mistakes sound pretty.’ Bernstein was heard to mutter at the end of the rehearsal ‘all we can do now is pray.’32 The Bernsteins’ visit was a fne example of the kind of personal hospitality of which Hussey was capable. The week of the Festival coincided with horse racing at nearby Goodwood, which meant that hotel accommodation in the area was scarce. Hussey had already invited Bernstein and his wife Felicia to stay at the Deanery, but the Bernsteins were coming en famille, bringing their two older children. After telephoning local hotels to no avail, Hussey managed to fnd a local family with children of the same age with whom the children could stay, as the Deanery had only one usable guest room.33 Despite an incident with a coffee pot and a yellow carpet, the three adults seemed to have enjoyed each other’s company, listening to some of Bernstein’s recordings which he had brought as a gift. The family visited Stonehenge in a car Hussey hired for them, and Hussey also took them to Bosham, a historic and beautiful village to the west of Chichester. One of the local papers also reported a visit to Brighton, during which Bernstein bought a stick of Brighton rock.34 The Bernsteins’ memory of Chichester was ‘a glowing one’, and Hussey was left with an invitation to visit New York, and an autographed facsimile of the manuscript (Bernstein’s habit was to present the originals to the Library of Congress).35 It would also seem that Hussey remained in possession of Bernstein’s fee. The offer of payment had been made in the frst approach to Bernstein, but an amount seems not to have been settled upon. Hussey evidently raised the matter with Robert Lantz, one of Bernstein’s aides, who replied leaving the matter of the fee entirely to Hussey.36 It would seem that Bernstein did not press the matter, and Hussey let the issue rest. Unlike some of the young and not so young professional composers and artists with whom Hussey had worked, Bernstein was by this time a wealthy man—West Side Story at one point earned two thousand dollars

32 Burton, Bernstein, p. 349. 33 WH to Bernstein, 8 July 1965, at Bernstein, Letters, pp. 470–471. 34 Hussey, Patron of Art, pp. 117–118; Portsmouth Evening News, 30 July 1965: cutting at MS Hussey 358. 35 Bernstein to WH, 20 September 1965, at Bernstein, Letters, p. 474; Felicia Bernstein to WH, 3 August 1965, at Bernstein, Letters, p. 463. The facsimile score, along with an autographed and dedicated copy of the printed score are to be found at MS Hussey 356. 36 Robert Lantz to WH, 30 June 1965, at MS Hussey 358. 196 P. Webster each week in royalties—and so it may simply have been that the kind of fee Chichester could have offered was not worth any dispute. As had been Britten’s thinking in 1943, any fee from Chichester would be far outmatched by later income for performing rights and from publication of the score and parts.37 The critical reception for the Psalms was mixed. When compared to the Kaddish symphony, it represented for some in the musical avant garde a retreat from the most contemporary trends in composition. The young John Adams, a student at Harvard, later wrote to charge Bernstein (whom he had not met) with ignoring the work of Pierre Boulez. ‘I cannot conceive of music (my own music) divorced from tonality’ Bernstein replied; whether this was good or bad, ‘the only meaningful thing is the truth of the creative act.’38 This objection Bernstein had anticipated in verse in the New York Times: ‘These psalms are a simple and modest affair / Tonal and tuneful and somewhat square / Certain to sicken a stout John Cager / With its tonics and triads in E-fat major’.39 Other critics were more prepared to judge the work in its own terms, rather than for what it was not. The New York Times, which had covered Bernstein’s work closely over many years, thought the Psalms ‘extremely direct and simple—and very beautiful’. The melodies were ‘among the sweetest that Mr Bernstein has written in any context’, but avoided any charge of banality since they were ‘so controlled and because the writing has such skill and conviction’.40 For the correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, ‘here was music at once direct, virile and attractive, music whose serious underlying purpose found its natural expression in a popular imagery which could have belonged to no other age than ours.’41 Some were rather less convinced. Stanley Sadie in the Musical Times thought parts of the Psalms ‘facile’, ‘just a little cheap’ and ‘very sentimental’. Wilfred Mellers, reviewing Bernstein’s 1966 recording for CBS felt that ‘the music convinces least when it claims most; the “noble” passages are not so much West Side Story as South Pacifc, too corny for

37 Burton, Bernstein, p. 286. 38 Bernstein to Adams, 27 January 1966, at Bernstein, Letters, p. 477. 39 Burton, Bernstein, p. 346. 40 R. Ericson (1965) ‘Music: Bernstein returns’, New York Times, 16 July 1965, p. 13. 41 Sunday Telegraph, 8 August 1965: cutting at MS Hussey 358. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 197 cornets.’ The composer Anthony Payne made perhaps the most signifcant point, when reviewing two later London performances. The Psalms suffered by comparison when set alongside jazz compositions by Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington because ‘both these composers were writing at frst hand in a popular style which Bernstein seems only capable of wearing like a cloak, and the gain in artistic sincerity was considerable.’ The critic Arthur Jacobs, writing for the Jewish Chronicle, while unworried by the ‘frankly “pop” feeling’, objected to the piece having the ‘slick professionalism of Bernstein without much else’. For Sadie, Bernstein’s music seemed ‘perilously lacking in identity’: a particularly damning view.42 In attempting to bridge two musical worlds, Bernstein had produced music authentic to neither. Although it is not explicit, it is also likely that the British reactions to the Psalms refected a cultural pre- disposition towards the indigenous and the English that also infuenced writers on experiments on church pop for worship.43 By and large, however, the Psalms avoided the kind of opprobrium heaped upon much of the experimentation with pop and jazz in church music in the previous few years. The probable reasons are several. Firstly, as it was a piece designed for extra-liturgical use, it could be more easily ignored by a listener than a setting of the Mass, such as Beaumont’s Folk Mass. Press and critics, both within the churches and outside, had in the Three Choirs Festival a model of church-based patronage of concert works which were seldom judged by the same criteria as liturgical music. Like Sutherland’s painting, but unlike Piper’s tapestry, the Psalms could be avoided by those who objected to its proximity to their worship. Crucially, the Psalms were well-crafted music, made by a recognised composer. Much of the criticism of church pop centred not so much on the introduction of popular style per se, but more on the fact that it was inferior music of its kind—that it was of insuffcient quality. Hussey perhaps summed the matter up when he told the Daily Mail that, in choosing Bernstein, he had been looking for a piece that was

42 S. Sadie (1965) ‘Chichester. Southern Cathedrals Festival’, Musical Times 106, n. 1471 (September), p. 694; W. Mellers (1966) [review of CBS recording of New York Philharmonic and the Camerata Singers under Bernstein], Musical Times 107, (February 1966), p. 132; Jewish Chronicle, 6 August 1965: cutting at MS Hussey 358; A. Payne (1967) ‘Music in London’, Musical Times 108 (August 1967), p. 722. 43 Jones and Webster, ‘Anglican “Establishment” reactions to “pop” church music’, passim. 198 P. Webster

‘in the popular idiom without being vulgar’.44 The importance of this controlling, restraining infuence of musical qualifcation was a regular note in the critical reception of fgures such as Malcolm Williamson. ‘One is very aware throughout’, wrote one critic of Williamson in 1965 ‘of an intensely intelligent and sensitive musical mind grappling … with the problems of providing music for the Church which both suits the text and the occasion and yet speaks … in a language which uses the techniques of “popular” musical experience without compromising the composer’s own high standards of taste and craftsmanship.’45 It is in Hussey’s firtation with popular style that we see the limits of much of the experimentation of the 1960s. Hussey could cope with the Psalms having something of West Side Story about them, as long as they were both composed and performed by trained musicians. The objections raised to popular styles in the arts were at least as much to with issues of authority and the maintenance of ‘standards’ as they were about the styles themselves.

Bryan Kelly, James Bernard and Herbert Howells In the Chichester Psalms, the touch of West Side Story was brought within the physical bounds of the church, but not subsequently into its worship. The Psalms were of a length that rendered them unsuitable for all but the most festal of services, and the orchestration, which required more percussionists than even the professional orchestras retained, assured that they would have a limited number of performances. They remain a work for concert performance, and relatively rarely at that. But, although it appears that Hussey had little direct involvement, there was another commission for the 1965 festival, which brought the popular directly into worship: the evening service setting in C by Bryan Kelly. A pupil of Herbert Howells at the Royal College of Music and then (like Lennox Berkeley) of Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Kelly was a younger man than Bernstein, at 32. He already had works to his name that employed Latin rhythms, such as the concert overture Latin Quarter

44 B. Norman (1965) ‘The swinging Dean peps up the Psalms’, Daily Mail, 9 August 1965: cutting at MS Hussey 358. 45 D. Lumsden (1965) ‘Notes on the Music’ in G.H. Knight and W.L Reed (eds.) The Treasury of English Church Music: volume 5 (London: Blandford), p. 215. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 199

(1955), and also some church music, most notably the Missa Brevis (1964). Importantly, he was on the staff of the Royal College of Music, as professor of theory and composition.46 Little is known about the approach to Kelly or the making of the work, but the Magnifcat and Nunc Dimittis in C were frst performed as part of the 1965 Festival. The settings combine Latin syncopation with the traditional combination of choir and organ in a way not seen before in the English cathedral repertoire.47 Although obscured by the attention that the Chichester Psalms attracted, within a short space of time the setting was soon being performed by some of the more ‘go-ahead’ cathedral choirs. The BBC broadcast a performance from Westminster Abbey in the summer of 1966, the result of a workshop day for parish choirs affliated to the Royal School of Church Music. There were subsequent broadcasts by the choir of the young Guildford Cathedral under the direction of Barry Rose in 1967, and in 1968 from Llandaff Cathedral, directed by Robert Joyce, Hussey’s organist at Northampton from 1950.48 In an extended notice in the Musical Times, Frank Howes (who had praised Rejoice in the Lamb in 1943) gave a measured assessment often absent from critical writing on ‘popular’ church music. Kelly was ‘not the frst composer to bring jazz into the Church,’ wrote Howes, ‘but he is suffciently unselfconscious about it to give the impression that the age- old tradition, as so often in the past, is absorbing a new element into itself. God is not mocked by syncopation’.49 Alec Wyton, Joyce’s predecessor as organist at Northampton and now in the USA, named the piece as among the most signifcant of the time.50 Since then, the work has secured a place in the cathedral repertoire. It remains a curiosity, a period piece, but the syncopation it employs has become commonplace, notably in the work of William Mathias and others. As with Bernstein,

46 F. Howes (1967) ‘Bryan Kelly’, Musical Times, 108, n. 1495 (September), p. 801. 47 A. Thurlow (1996) ‘Chichester Commissions’, Chichester Cathedral Journal, pp. 5–9, at p. 6. 48 Radio Times n. 2230 (4 August 1966), p. 38; Radio Times, 2344 (10 October 1968), p. 89; a recording of the Guildford performance is available at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v Dj1HmZTFI_A, accessed 29 August 2016. = 49 Howes, ‘Bryan Kelly’, p. 801. 50 A. Wyton (1968) ‘The New Look in the Church’s Music’, English Church Music, pp. 8–9. 200 P. Webster it represents a mode in which popular infuences could safely be integrated into the daily music of the church under the control of skilled and authoritative composers and performers. As Alec Wyton put it, such infuence needed ‘the discipline of a craftsman’s skills behind it.’51 That the commission from Kelly was no unsuccessful experiment is evident from the fact that Kelly later added a companion setting of the communion service, in the same key of C, which was performed at the 1968 Festival. It is not clear whether this was a commission, or simply a dedication of a piece to Chichester that Kelly wrote on his own initiative; it was published the previous year, dedicated ‘to John Birch and the choir of Chichester cathedral’.52 There was certainly a commission for the 1971 Festival, funded by the Bishop Bell Trustees: a setting of the Te Deum by Malcolm Williamson.53 Whilst also heavily synco- pated throughout, it is less evidently popular in appeal than Kelly, and is suffciently diffcult to have taxed the three choirs although perhaps without fnally defeating them. Although it was published immediately by Williamson’s usual publisher, few choirs since have judged the effort involved in preparing it a worthwhile investment, and it has not entered the cathedral repertoire.54 Alan Thurlow, Birch’s successor, was wholly unaware of it when writing his survey of the commissions for Chichester.55 There were also two more works commissioned for the 1968 Southern Cathedrals Festival which Hussey did not mention in Patron of Art, and which have evaded the attention of most historians. The frst of these was an evening service by James Bernard (rather better known as a composer for flm), the manuscripts of which were part of Hussey’s collection. Hussey had met Bernard as a young man in 1943, via Benjamin Britten, for whom Bernard subsequently worked as an assistant. Although Bernard was one of those that Britten ‘dropped’ soon afterwards, they remained in contact: Bernard’s song cycle Shepherd’s

51 Wyton, ‘New Look’, p. 9. 52 B. Kelly (1967) Communion Service in C (London: Novello). It forms no. 1434 in the Parish Choir Book series. 53 Southern Cathedrals Festival programme (1968), p. 4; Southern Cathedrals Festival programme (1971), p. 2: both at MS Hussey 164. 54 M. Williamson (1971) Te Deum. For SATB choir, organ and optional brass ensemble (London: Josef Weinberger). 55 Thurlow, ‘Chichester commissions’, p. 7. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 201

Warning set words by Paul Dehn and was written for Peter Pears, who performed it at the Wigmore Hall in November 1954.56 Bernard published two carols in 1967, which were dedicated to Hussey and John Birch, and which Bernard described as ‘for Chichester cathedral’, but it is not clear how formal a commission this was. The 1968 Magnifcat and Nunc dimittis were published by Novello, having been written ‘for the Very Reverend Walter Hussey, Mr John Birch, and the Choir of Chichester Cathedral—Southern Cathedrals’ Festival, Chichester, 1968’.57 They were written at the same time as Bernard’s score for the Hammer flm, The Devil Rides Out. ‘It’s rather schizophrenic’ Bernard said to The Times; ‘in one half of my mind I’m thinking of the Magnifcat, in one half of orgies and black masses. I’ve just done the Magnifcat, today I’m recording the music for a Satanic orgy that they’re flming in a few days time; and then I’ll be going back to the Nunc Dimittis.’58 Whether this conjunction caused Hussey and Birch any pause is not known. In any case, it may have been this piece that Birch thought ‘one for the cupboard’ shortly after its frst performance.59 The 1968 Southern Cathedrals Festival also saw what might have amounted to a highly signifcant commission, of a new Magnifcat and Nunc Dimittis for each of the three choirs from Herbert Howells. It was Howells who had begun the practice of naming a setting after the church for which it was written (rather than after its key), and had responded to particular buildings to produce some of the fnest work in the repertoire. Howells had completed the frst, for Winchester, in March 1967, and was at work on the Chichester set in the autumn of the same year.60 However, none of the three established themselves in the cathedral repertoire, despite being published by Howells’ regular publisher,

56 Times, 15 November 1954, p. 11; J. Bridcut (2006) Britten’s Children (London: Faber), pp. 253–258. 57 J. Bernard (1968) Magnifcat and Nunc Dimittis. For SATB and organ (London: Novello). The service is no. 1456 in the Parish Choir Book series. 58 Be merry! and Jesus is His name were both published by Oxford University Press; ‘The Times Diary’, The Times, 15 September 1967, p. 8; D. Huckvale (2006) James Bernard, composer to Count Dracula. A critical biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland), pp. 180–182. 59 Interview with Garth Turner, 8 February 2017. 60 P. Spicer (1998) Herbert Howells (Bridgend: Seren), pp. 137–138, 175. 202 P. Webster

Novello.61 Hussey seems to have had little or no involvement, and Birch had little to say about them in a later interview.62 The lack of critical attention they received may have been due to their relative insignifcance in Howells’ oeuvre. As well as that, in the late 1960s—over 20 years since the seminal Collegium Regale service for King’s College, Cambridge— there seemed to be little new to them. The critic of the Musical Times thought all three were fnely crafted examples of Howells’ now familiar idiom, but the Chichester service the least convincing of the three.63 An alternative reading might be that the persistent use by Howells of sharp dissonance, not merely as colouring but as an organising principle, was less appealing to choirs and congregations than the more approachable earlier services for Gloucester or St Paul’s. Frank Howes wrote of ‘latent unease and dark shadow’; another well-informed critic thought the service ‘spiritually unsettling’.64 There was another work planned for the 1968 Festival which was not to materialise, either then or later: a second work by Benjamin Britten. Hussey had apparently been so confdent that this would come to pass that it was advertised publicly in Chichester ahead of the event, only for the festival programme to carry an apology for its absence.65 The correspondence suggests that Hussey misjudged the situation. Hussey had written late in 1965, mentioning the Chichester Psalms, perhaps as a means of piquing Britten’s interest. Britten was willing but non-com- mittal.66 A year passed, and Hussey wrote again. Britten was still willing, but had been very unwell: could he write again after taking a holiday

61 H. Howells (1968) Magnifcat and Nunc Dimittis for SATB and organ (London: Novello). The service is no. 1439 in the Parish Choir Book series. 62 Thurlow, ‘Chichester Commissions’, p. 6; Birch and Thurlow, ‘Music in the Cathedral’, p. 123. 63 P. Dennison, (1968) ‘New Choral Music’, Musical Times, 109, n. 1508, p. 959. All three settings are analysed along with the rest of Howells’ evening service settings in S. Cleobury (2007) ‘The style and development of Herbert Howells’ Evening Canticle settings’ (Unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of Birmingham). 64 F. Howes (1968) ‘Herbert Howells and the Anglican tradition’, in the Southern Cathedrals Festival programme (1968), p. 6, at MS Hussey 164; Patrick Russill, as quoted in Thurlow, ‘Chichester Commissions’, p. 7. 65 Southern Cathedrals Festival Programme (1968), p. 4, at MS Hussey 164. 66 Britten to WH, 24 November 1965, at MS Hussey 299. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 203 to convalesce, he asked?67 Hussey took this as a strong enough commitment to tell his musicians in Chichester, and the Festival organisers, who by the middle of 1967 were ‘clamouring at my door’ for details of the new piece. Hussey was ‘terribly sorry to bother you and I do recognise what a bore tiresome people can be, who nag away impatiently’, but could Britten now commit to producing a piece for the following summer? Hussey had previously suggested a Te Deum: ‘This, I am certain, would be enormously useful and helpful not only to ourselves but to many others. But I do not want to seem to tie you down in any way— if you feel that you would prefer something else, that would be magnif- cent for us. Dear Ben, do say you will do this if you possibly can. I would love to have something by you for us here, and so I know would everybody else. Please do.’68 At this point, Britten seems to have engaged more seriously with the idea: need it be another Te Deum, he asked? He had written two already: perhaps instead a hymn, by Wesley or Cowper, or part of the Mass in English?69 Hussey evidently grasped at the prospect of the last of these, but it was not to be. By April, Britten was struggling with serious illness, an infammation of the heart which put him in hospital for a month, making the work impossible.70 At the end of 1970, Hussey tried again for the 1971 festival at Chichester, also for an English Mass, and then for the 1975 celebration of Chichester’s 900th anniversary, but without success.71 Preoccupied with what were, in fact, to be his last works, Britten was by that time too ill and too busy to add to his corpus of church music.

Chichester 900 and William Walton 1975 was the year of the ninth centenary of the foundation of the cathedral. Historic organisations have often made much of these occasions, and by 1973, thoughts had turned to celebration. But there was some

67 Britten to WH, 4 December 1966, at MS Hussey 299. 68 WH to Britten, undated draft, probably from the summer of 1967, at MS Hussey 299. 69 Britten to WH, 10 December 1967, at MS Hussey 299. 70 Britten to WH, 30 April 1968, at MS Hussey 299; P. Kildea (2014) Benjamin Britten. A life in the twentieth century (London: Penguin), p. 498. 71 Britten to WH, 6 January 1971 and 11 February 1973, both at MS Hussey 300. 204 P. Webster debate within the special committee set up in Chichester as to whether an expensive program of events was appropriate at the time. The fnancial burden of the cathedral fabric was still considerable; the cathedral organ had become unusable in 1972 (not being restored until 1986)72; in the country at large, there was industrial unrest and political instabil- ity with the miners’ strike and the fall of the Heath government. The decision was made that there should be a festival of music and the arts, involving the whole city but centred on the cathedral, which should be largely self-fnancing. The Duke of Richmond secured fnancial guaran- tees from a group of local people against which to secure a bank loan. Hugh, Baron Cudlipp of Aldingbourne, recently retired from newspapers and television and now resident in Chichester, chaired the committee.73 (Cudlipp became something of an ally, later helping to persuade George Weidenfeld to publish Patron of Art.)74 Cudlipp used the programme of the Festival to set out its aims:

Chichester Cathedral has been the centre of the spiritual life and, to a considerable degree, the cultural life of Chichester and the Diocese for 900 years…In a year of fairly unrelieved economic gloom we felt, para- doxically perhaps, that this was just the time for a festivity—provided public expenditure was minimal and extravagance of any sort was avoided… The city continually demonstrates a unique and virile sense of community. If the 900 Festivities highlights this fact [and] emphasises the part the Cathedral plays in the life of the community, then most of our objectives will have been achieved.75

The one-off event in 1975 became, in fact, an annual event that con- tinues to this day, and the cathedral has remained the focal point. But for the cathedral in 1975, amidst the schools music, Civil War reenact- ment and hot-air ballooning, the centenary was the main focus. Hussey thought it natural that the cathedral should want some specially written music; this was a pattern of commissioning well established amongst the

72 Birch and Thurlow, ‘Music at the cathedral’, p. 116. 73 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 132; P. Hewitt (2004) ‘A time of celebration, joy and fun’ in Foster (ed.) Chichester and the Arts, pp. 196–197. 74 Cudlipp to Weidenfeld, 13 December 1983, at MS Hussey 281. 75 Hewitt, ‘A time of celebration’, p. 198. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 205 cathedrals. There were to be three pieces, the frst of which was a return by Hussey to his very frst target for Northampton: William Walton. After Walton’s refusal of Hussey’s approach in 1942, Hussey had not given up entirely, continuing to invite him to successive frst performances and unveilings. Walton came to at least one of these, that of Moore’s Madonna in February 1944. His own impressions are not recorded, but at some point during the remaining years of the war he acquired one of the maquettes of the Madonna and Child, which he was to treasure: possibly one of a set of bronze castings of the fnal model.76 He had also liked Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb, a fact that amused Britten somewhat, since there was limited musical sympathy and some professional rivalry between the two, although personal relations were cordial enough.77 Graham Sutherland thought that Walton had come to regret having turned Hussey down.78 Despite this, the correspondence soon lapsed. Walton’s name came up again in conversation with John Birch when planning for 1975. Informal enquiries about Walton’s availability from those who knew him suggested that he was too occupied with the Third Symphony (which he was never to complete), and would likely refuse. By this time, Walton was one of the grand old men of English music: a composer of music for coronations, the friend of Prime Ministers, a member of the Order of Merit. He was also not in good health, and writing with greater diffculty as a result. On Hussey’s behalf, James Bernard, a mutual friend, put the idea to Walton directly over dinner, to which the response was positive. Walton at frst understood that he was to write a Te Deum, but was stayed from beginning work just in time by a letter from Hussey in September 1973, which made it clear that an evening service was required.79 Walton intended to start work straight away, to then allow a clear run at the Symphony.

76 S. Walton (1988) William Walton. Behind the Facade (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 213; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 36; R. Berthoud (2003) The Life of Henry Moore (2nd edn., London: De la Mare), p. 218. 77 Britten to WH, 28 February 1944, at MS Hussey 297; Walton, Behind the Facade, pp. 123–126; H. Carpenter (1992) Benjamin Britten. A biography (London: Faber), pp. 70, 84. 78 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 133. 79 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 133; William Walton to WH, 19 September 1973, at MS Hussey 372. 206 P. Webster

Little now survives to document the making of the Chichester Service. At some point, probably in late 1973, Hussey met Walton and his wife for lunch in London to discuss the commission.80 The following July, Walton wrote to Malcolm Arnold: ‘I’m doing Mag. & Nunc for Chichester—about all I can manage—if I can even manage that.’ The symphony was still ‘a non-starter’.81 By December, Walton had managed well enough and the manuscript was sent off to Oxford University Press. Walton reported that the setting had presented more diffculties than he had anticipated, but Hussey and Birch were evidently pleased, and Hussey promptly sent a cheque for £500.82 Walton was to have attended the frst performance on 14 June, but was unwell. Walton’s corpus of church music is small, but much of it has entered the repertoire, the Chichester Service included. The setting is vivid, and at once challenging and rewarding for the singers. The Chichester choir gave the frst broadcast performance a few days after the premiere in June 1975, and it was subsequently broadcast from St John’s College, Cambridge and Norwich Cathedral.83 However, it seems to have attracted almost no attention from either the mainstream or specialist musical presses. Although highly effective and impeccably crafted, there was little new or shocking about Walton’s settings. The same may not be said of the Mass by William Albright.

William Albright The second of the three centenary commissions also involved the calling in of an old contact. Alec Wyton had been Hussey’s organist at Northampton between 1946 and 1949 before leaving to take up a post at the Cathedral School in Dallas, Texas.84 The two remained in contact, during which time, in 1954, Wyton became organist of the cathedral of

80 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 133. 81 Walton to Arnold, 12 July 1974, at M. Hayes, ed. (2002) The Selected Letters of William Walton (London: Faber), p. 412. 82 Walton to Hussey, 1 December 1974, at MS Hussey 372; Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 134. 83 Radio Times, 2692, 12 June 1975, p40; Radio Times, 2829, 26 January 1978, p. 49; Radio Times 2895, 3 May 1979, p. 63. 84 M. Harrison (1993) The centenary history of St Matthew’s church and parish, Northampton (Edinburgh: Pentland), pp. 101–106. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 207

St John the Divine in New York City, one of the most prominent posts in American church music, and also served in the 1960s as president of the American Guild of Organists. Over two decades in New York, he was to experiment with contemporary styles, with concerts in the cathedral from both Duke Ellington and the cast of the Broadway musical Hair.85 This openness to non-traditional styles would have put him in sympathy with the young composer whom he recommended to Hussey: William Albright. Although not yet 30, Albright was in Wyton’s view one of America’s rising stars whose music deserved to be better known in the UK.86 Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan, Albright had interests as varied as Messiaen, the ragtime of Scott Joplin and electronic modifcation of sound. So far, he had no profle in the composition of religious music, apart from for the organ.87 Quite how much of this Hussey or John Birch knew is not clear, but the commission of an unknown fgure with such eclectic stylistic interests was a risk, and a return to Hussey’s freewheeling patronage of the 1940s. Unfortunately, little information about the commission survives in the Hussey Papers. By May 1975, the choir had their copies in hand, and Albright was responding to some fnal queries from John Birch.88 Scored for unaccompanied choir with a treble soloist, the Mass was frst performed at the festival Eucharist on 18 June 1975, to almost universal approval, Hussey thought.89 Birch recalled that some of the Friends were not quite so impressed, but the piece did not attract any sustained opposition. In a way possible with a piece of music as it was not with Piper’s tapestry, those members of the congregation who disliked the Mass tended simply to avoid the two Sundays in a typical year when it was used, even thirty years later.90 The positive reception is to some degree surprising, since Albright’s harmonic language is a

85 C. Whitney (2007) ‘Alec Wyton, 85, organist who updated church music, is dead’, New York Times, 23 March 2007, p. B7. 86 Wyton to WH, 17 October 1975, at MS Hussey 355. 87 ‘Albright, William’ in Grove. 88 Albright to WH, 19 May 1975, at MS Hussey 355. 89 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 135. 90 Birch and Thurlow, ‘Music at the Cathedral’, pp. 118–119. 208 P. Webster great deal more challenging than that of Walton’s service. It is perhaps the most ‘diffcult’ composition in the Hussey catalogue, even though Albright himself thought it simple and straightforward when compared to his other work.91 Although the Mass has never entered the broader cathedral repertoire in the UK, there is some evidence that it attracted some wider attention, although mostly in the United States. In 1979, Hussey, by then retired, was invited to give a keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Association of Anglican Musicians in New York City, during the four days of which there were liturgical performances of both the Bernstein and the Albright works, and a panel discussion on the theme of ‘The Church as Patron of the Arts’ involving Hussey and Alec Wyton.92 The lag in adoption of the work was most likely due to the fact that it was not published until 1980 in a revised form prepared in 1979, possibly for the New York meeting.93 It was apparently not broadcast in the UK until 1981.94 The frst recording was made only in 1989 by the choir of Trinity Church, Wall Street.95

Lennox Berkeley (Again) Patron of Art documents the William Walton commission at some length, that from Albright less so. The third commission for the centenary events in 1975 is not mentioned at all: the anthem The Lord is my shepherd, by Lennox Berkeley. Hussey had been suffciently pleased with the Festival Anthem for Northampton to turn to Berkeley twice more, in 1953 and 1954. Berkeley was on both occasions too busy with other things, but although he often disliked his older works, he still thought the Festival Anthem one of his better pieces, and left the possibility open.96 Then Hussey moved to Chichester in 1955, and

91 Albright to WH, 27 December 1974, at MS Hussey 485. 92 Conference programme, June 10–14 1979, at MS Hussey 26. 93 By the Henmar Press of New York. 94 Radio Times, 3008 (2 July 1981), p. 62. 95 Choral Music by 20th Century American Composers: volume 1 (Gothic Records G 78932). 96 Berkeley to WH, 15 March 1953 and 3 February 1954, both at MS Hussey 291. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 209 the correspondence lapsed until 1973, when Hussey approached Berkeley to write for the centenary. Berkeley was touched, recalling the Northampton commission as his very frst, and this time agreed.97 The two met in London to discuss the details in the autumn of 1973, since Berkeley, now 70, professed that he needed more time than his younger self to refect on the task.98 It is not known how the text was selected, or what other guidance Hussey was able to give, but by April 1975 the piece was fnished. The size of the fee is not known, but Berkeley thought it generous, and Hussey asked for and received the manuscript for his collection.99 The piece was frst performed on 14 June, the Saturday before the centenary Eucharist. As befts the text, there is a gentleness and serenity to Berkeley’s setting, particularly in the treble solo sections, and the piece has entered the wider cathedral repertoire. There is little of the harmonic astringency of the 1964 Mass for Westminster Cathedral, or the Three Latin Motets for St John’s College, Cambridge, or indeed Walton’s service. Amongst the new church music of the mid-seventies, it is a conservative piece, a gift from one older man to another (Image 7.1). Although it came after Hussey’s retirement, the commission may also have led to Berkeley’s only setting of the evening canticles, for the Southern Cathedrals Festival of 1980, sometimes known as the Chichester Service; the conductor of both frst performances was John Birch. There was one fnal, explicitly valedictory episode in Hussey’s commissioning of new music, which also seems to have gone largely unno- ticed: the three songs which Berkeley wrote for Hussey’s retirement in 1977. Numbered as Berkeley’s Op. 93, no. 1 under the title Another Spring, the songs set texts from Walter de la Mare, from the 1950 collection Inward Companion. The mezzo-soprano Dame Janet Baker gave the frst performance in the cathedral in July 1977, as part of a recital just days before Hussey formally retired. Berkeley himself was present,

97 Berkeley to WH, 29 September 1973, at MS Hussey 291. 98 Berkeley to WH, 21 October 1973, at MS Hussey 291. 99 Berkeley to WH, 20 April 1975, 27 May 1975 and 6 July 1975, all at MS Hussey 291. 210 P. Webster

Image 7.1 Hussey in his study, as he approached retirement. A maquette for the Henry Moore Madonna and Child at Northampton is visible on the shelf behind him. Image from WSRO MS Hussey 65, reproduced by permission of Sussex Life Magazine

noting in his diary that ‘they were well sung and seem to have greatly impressed Andrew Porter [the music critic of the New Yorker] who wrote the most favourable notice I’ve ever had’.100 Janet Baker was the dedica- tee and Hussey seems to have prevailed on Berkeley to present him with the manuscript.101 Unfortunately, it would seem that the making of the songs was trans- acted between Hussey and Berkeley in person or by telephone, since no trace of the process shows in Hussey’s papers, save for one letter after the event. Berkeley and his wife had greatly enjoyed Hussey’s farewell

100 P. Dickinson (2012) Lennox Berkeley and Friends. Writings, Letters and Interviews (Woodbridge: Boydell), p. 216. 101 S. R. Craggs (2000) Lennox Berkeley: a source book (Brookfeld, VT, Ashgate) p. 118; the manuscript is at MS Hussey 290. 7 CHICHESTER MUSIC 211 and hoped to see him more now that he was to move to London.102 Hussey also made no mention of the songs in Patron of Art, or indeed the recital.103 Whether Hussey saw the commission as a private gift, or irrelevant to a book on church patronage, or simply was disappointed with the songs, must remain a matter for speculation. The last, at least, seems unlikely. Hussey’s early adventure included a recital in his church by one of the great female voices of her age, Kirsten Flagstad; a recital from another outstanding voice must have seemed a ftting end.

102 Berkeley to WH, 22 July 1977, at MS Hussey 291. 103 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 137. CHAPTER 8

Cathedral, City and Diocese

What else was there to Hussey’s ministry other than his patronage of the arts? To what extent can Hussey be said to have been both a good parish priest, and a good dean (since the skills required for the two roles are by no means the same)? This chapter on the ‘local history’ of Chichester— of the cathedral in its urban and diocesan contexts—argues that his extreme specialism in one particular ministry disguised the fact that in much else, Hussey was dutiful at best, and that the defciencies were most clearly revealed once he reached Chichester. In what was otherwise a tender portrait of a close friend, Hilary Bryan-Brown posed a key question in relation to Hussey, which she did not answer, but no other commentator has otherwise asked. Had Hussey entered the church because it was expected of him, the son and younger brother of Anglican priests—simply a fact of social reality—or because he ‘had had a real calling? Not that I would dispute Walter’s godliness, but I have always had this query in my mind.’1 Hussey’s diaries from the period before entering Cuddesdon suggest he took the matter seriously enough, but the broader point remains. Hussey’s career coincided with a time of intense self-scrutiny within the Church of England over its very form and purposes. The question was asked: did not the trappings of

1 H. Bryan-Brown (2007) ‘Hussey at the Deanery’ in P. Foster (ed.) Chichester Deans. Continuity, Commitment and Change at Chichester Cathedral, 1902–2006 (Chichester: University of Chichester), p. 72.

© The Author(s) 2017 213 P. Webster, Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain, Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-36910-9_8 214 P. Webster social, economic and political privilege that establishment entailed compromise the true purposes of a servant church? Figures such as George Bell or the archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey both took advan- tage of the status the church had, but were at the same time only just comfortable enough with that privilege to allow them to do so. Hussey’s career shows little sign of any such discomfort. A progression from a clerical family through public school, elite university, socially prominent London parish, his familial parish and fnally the apparent stability of a provincial cathedral city seems to have been entirely natural to him. This sense of the givenness of the position of the church in English society goes some way to explaining some of the other features of his ministry which are the subject of this chapter. To what extent were there failings before Hussey came to Chichester? There are few clues from Hussey’s curacy in London. In Northampton, Hussey seems to have been a conscientious parish priest, but it seems clear that this was in large part a drawing on the capital laid down by his father. John Rowden Hussey had been the frst and only vicar of St Matthew’s, holding the position for over four decades. After retirement, John Rowden continued to live in the parish, and take a close interest in the church, as his funding of Moore’s Madonnna and Child indicates. As such, St Matthew’s was almost entirely his father’s creation when Hussey took over in 1937, with well-established patterns of ministry which Hussey needed only to maintain as their creator looked on (see Chap. 3). Hussey’s limitations more clearly emerge as dean when this supportive structure of parental expectation and established routine was no longer available to him. The task of assessing Hussey as dean depends greatly on which understanding of the role of the cathedral he is to be measured against. The tasks outlined by Cathedrals and Modern Life in 1961 (explored in Chap. 6) continued to comprehend the ambitions of the cathedrals throughout Hussey’s time: to be specialists and exemplars in worship, homes for excellence in the arts, centres of education, resources for their dioceses, ministers to visitors and integral parts of the life of their cities. It is the contention of this chapter that Hussey invested too heavily in some of these areas to the exclusion of others. One of the roles of a cathedral was to be a model of the highest possible standards of worship. The cathedrals had long understood that to entail the maintenance and promotion of a unique musical repertoire and tradition of performance as an end in itself. In this respect, Hussey was 8 CATHEDRAL, CITY AND DIOCESE 215 manifestly a success, as we saw in Chap. 7. As well as its music, Hussey was careful with the details of the conduct of the liturgy more generally, both for major occasions and in the more routine daily worship. The two taperers (boy choristers carrying candles in procession) had to be of the same height; the gentlemen of the choir could not wear brown shoes beneath their cassocks. Around the cathedral, Hussey himself was ‘always immaculately turned out’, setting an example to others ‘by walking very upright with great dignity.’2 Hussey was innovative in the sense that he was able to widen the scope of that excellence in worship to include the visual arts, and the adornment of the inside of the building more generally. In this, Hussey continued George Bell’s work in the diocese more widely, and indeed partly fulflled the aims with which Bell had frst attempted to bring Hussey to Chichester in 1948. Chichester is also now routinely held up amongst the cathedrals as the prime example of what may be achieved. Hussey’s successor thought his other main strength was in the maintenance of the fabric of the cathedral building. Working with Robert Potter, the urgent need for repair work was identifed early, and the Sussex Churches Campaign launched in 1963. Potter also placed the maintenance staff of the cathedral on a frm business footing with the foundation of the Cathedral Works Organisation. As well as the replacement of the Arundel Screen, there were signifcant repairs and stabilisation works around the building, along with a remodelling of the approach to the main west doors.3 If there was yet work to do after Hussey retired, he did no worse at a diffcult task than might be expected (Image 8.1). But a cathedral is more than its art and its music, and it is here that at least some later commentators have judged Hussey more severely. Trevor Beeson, an observer well connected with the cathedral world around which information travels quickly, thought his tenure at least disappointing, if not indeed a disaster. An excessive concentration on the arts left Hussey largely indifferent to the broader imperative of building a community of Christians, clerical and lay, artistic and not, which could minister to the city and diocese on every level. Chichester, ‘all glorious within

2 L. Mason (2007) ‘Walter Hussey’ in Foster (ed.) Chichester Deans, p. 144. 3 R. Holtby (1994) ‘The immediate past’ in M. Hobbs (ed.), Chichester Cathedral. An historical survey (Chichester: Phillimore), pp. 283–284. 216 P. Webster

Image 8.1 Chichester Cathedral viewed from the gates of the Deanery and without, became a cold, unhappy place.’4 Hussey was by no means the only clergyman to feel the sharp edge of Beeson’s pen, and the case is perhaps overstated. David Burton Evans, priest vicar in the early 1970s, without hesitation recalled the cathedral as a happy and effective community, although not without its disagreements.5 However, it may well

4 T. Beeson (2004) The Deans (London: SCM Press), pp. 189, 187. 5 Interview with David Burton Evans. 8 CATHEDRAL, CITY AND DIOCESE 217 be argued that Hussey’s ministry was lopsided: seminal in regards to the arts, undistinguished in other ways. While no dean could supervise every operational matter within a cathedral, failings in those matters may in part be ascribed to the priorities which he set and the culture which he in part created and sustained. How far did Hussey respond to the opportunity of increased tour- ism? In the 1930s, Chichester was referred to without irony as a ‘people’s cathedral’, in which there were special services for holidaymakers, and showings of religious flms (a highly unusual move). Duncan- Jones noted the way in which ‘people have discovered that holidays are none the less happy for becoming for a short while holy-days’.6 As we shall see, Hussey was always ready to show visitors the works of art in the cathedral and the Deanery. Garth Turner remembered Hussey’s habit of spending time in the cathedral engaging visitors in conversation, although he was not above uttering a stern ‘Be quiet!’ to quell the noise visitors made.7 In order to cater more effectively for visitors, Hussey’s time saw the opening in 1975 of a gift shop in the free-standing bell tower by the west end. The Bishop Bell tea room in the cloister, designed by Robert Potter, was opened in 1977.8 But these were late additions; for much of Hussey’s time, tourists were welcome enough, not merely tolerated, with guided tours and various items of literature made available, but there was little done to engage with them pastorally. In this, Chichester was probably no more advanced or backward than most cathedrals. Fundamental to the priestly role is preaching, and even those most sympathetic to Hussey did not see preaching as one of his strengths. Trevor Beeson thought that Hussey gave only infrequent sermons which were lacking in identifable Christian content when they came.9 A review of the cathedral service schema in the early 1970s partially confrms this as to frequency. In the three months to Christmas 1973, Hussey preached only once; in the second quarter of 1974, he preached

6 P. Foster (2007) ‘Arthur Stuart Duncan-Jones. Dean of Chichester 1929–1955’ in Foster (ed.), Chichester Deans, p. 31; A.S. Duncan-Jones (1933) The Story of Chichester Cathedral (London: Raphael Tuck and Sons), p. 75. 7 Interview with Garth Turner. 8 Holtby, ‘The immediate past’, p. 288. 9 Beeson, ‘The Deans’, p. 191. 218 P. Webster four times, which appears to have been untypically frequent. However, with only one or possibly two sermons each Sunday, and several clergy to share the duties, these numbers do not appear particularly neglectful. David Burton Evans remembered that both the precentor Keith Walker and the chancellor Vernon Lippiett enjoyed preaching (as did Evans himself), but none of them is a conspicuously more frequent name in these lists than Hussey.10 Hussey, in fact, reserved to himself the role of cel- ebrant at the main service of Holy Communion on a Sunday, and so was less likely to preach on the same day. However, Lancelot Mason thought that some at the cathedral had been disappointed by how infrequently it heard its dean preach, but (perhaps rather kindly) attributed the fact to Hussey’s modesty.11 Nervousness might be a better term for Hussey’s view of his own preaching. Hilary Bryan-Brown recalled often acting as a sounding-board for Hussey over the content and style of a piece of writing or public speaking. David Burton Evans remembered him as hesitant in delivery and seemingly uncomfortable. Tom Devonshire Jones’ impression that Hussey’s sermons rarely achieved more than plainness is confrmed by a reading of those which are left in the papers.12 Given a plentiful supply of preachers from within the chapter, Hussey was able to avoid the frequent duty of preaching that was his at Northampton. It is unsurprising then that Hussey also did little to consolidate the cathedral’s role as a centre of education. Hilary Bryan- Brown recalled Hussey being very energised by the scheme to open up the cathedral treasury as a permanent display of plate and other treasures. However, Garth Turner’s recollection was that the pulpit was the principal and indeed only means of education in the late 1960s.13 Part of the rationale for Bishop Wilson’s appointment of Keith Walker as precentor in 1971 was to develop the cathedral’s educational work among the clergy of the diocese, as foil to Hussey.14 Walker very quickly found the relationship with the nearby Chichester Theological College had been

10 Interview with David Burton Evans; service schema for 1971–1974, in possession of David Burton Evans. 11 Mason, ‘Walter Hussey’, p. 143. 12 T. Devonshire Jones (2007) ‘The legacy: the public fgure’ in Foster (ed.), Chichester Deans, p. 65; interview with David Burton Evans; interview with Hilary Bryan-Brown. 13 Interview with Hilary Bryan-Brown; interview with Garth Turner. 14 Interview with David Burton Evans; Dean and Chapter Act Book, minute 284/71, at WSRO Cap.I/3/17. 8 CATHEDRAL, CITY AND DIOCESE 219 allowed to deteriorate.15 It was only under Hussey’s successor Robert Holtby, arriving at Chichester fresh from a decade in the administration of the Church of England’s schools, that the cathedral was to establish an education centre in the cloisters.16 It had not been for the arts alone that George Bell had wanted Hussey as his dean. Writing to the Prime Minister in 1955, Bell expected that Hussey would be particularly strong pastorally, and in strengthen- ing the religious and social relationships of cathedral and city, and of the cathedral with the diocese at large.17 Chapter 9 enlarges on Hussey as pastor, but he was in fact rather weak in relation to diocese and city. George Bell’s visitation charge to the cathedral in 1949 had recommended that the cathedral take a wider view of its role in the diocese, building on the role of liturgical exemplar that Duncan-Jones had already established for it. As well as the expansion of the role of treasurer to encompass all the artistic treasures of the diocese (in which role Bell had sought to place Hussey), the precentor should be concerned with the music of the whole diocese, and the chancellor with religious education.18 About these roles, Hussey seems to have been relatively uncon- cerned. Hussey was a member of the Sussex Churches Arts Council—a Bell creation, charged with promoting the arts in the parishes of the diocese—but seems to have been an infrequent attender of its meetings. It was only with reluctance that he would travel to Hove to meet with the staff of the diocese. Trevor Beeson reported a marked slowness in Hussey to be as hospitable in person to preachers from around the diocese as he was to those interested in the arts: men who had travelled eighty miles from the other end of the diocese to preach were not offered so much as a cup of coffee.19 One visiting preacher was shocked to fnd that the cathedral was fulflling its role of praying for each of the parishes in turn using an outdated schedule from the previous year:

15 Dean and Chapter Act Book, minute 360/71, at WSRO Cap.I/3/17. 16 Holtby, ‘Immediate Past’, p. 289. 17 Bell to Anthony Bevir, 21 February 1955, at WSRO Ep.Acc.11268. 18 R.C.D. Jasper (1967) George Bell, Bishop of Chichester (London: Oxford University Press), pp. 358–359. 19 Beeson, ‘The Deans’, p. 191. 220 P. Webster an oversight perhaps, but revealing of what was thought a priority.20 One of Holtby’s obituarists stressed Holtby’s work to ‘enable the diocese to appreciate its cathedral’ (an implicit but clear contrast with his predecessor).21 Cathedrals in Modern Life had noted a growing opportunity for cathedrals to become embedded in the civic life of their cities as the demand for special occasional services increased. ‘Many times in the year they are found,’ noted Duncan-Jones in 1933, ‘mothers, soldiers, scouts, guides, servers, groups gathered to commemorate some great man or stirring event, or to plead for some noble cause.’22 That Duncan-Jones succeeded in this aspiration may be deduced from the dinner given by the city in honour of his twenty-ffth anniversary as dean in 1954. Canon Browne-Wilkinson spoke of the kindness of the mayor, which the cathedral had learned to expect.23 In Hussey’s time, the direction of travel seemed to be the opposite. One of Holtby’s obituarists noted that relationships were not strong with the city and that Holtby had some work of reconstruction to do as a result.24 Another thought that Holtby was (in implicit contrast with Hussey) ‘a respected and trusted fgure in the town’.25 In 1971, the mayor and corporation declined to visit the cathedral on Mayor’s Sunday, choosing instead to attend Mass at the Roman Catholic church of St Richard; the mayor was himself a Roman Catholic and a member of the church.26 While unusual, this in itself would not have necessarily been a refection on the relationship with the cathedral at a time of ecumenical optimism, but some read it so; a former mayor attributed it to a lack of sympathy with the style of worship at the

20 Interview with Garth Turner; interview with David Burton Evans. 21 A. Webster, ‘Obituary: The Very Revd. Robert Holtby’, Guardian, 1 April 2003, accessed via www.guardian.com. 22 Duncan-Jones, The Story of Chichester Cathedral, p. 75. 23 Browne-Wilkinson to Eric Banks (town clerk), 12 November 1954, at MS Hussey 461. 24 ‘Obituary: The Very Revd. Robert Holtby’, Daily Telegraph, 19 March 2003, accessed via www.telegraph.co.uk. 25 A. Webster, ‘Obituary of Holtby’. 26 Anon. (2008) St. Richard’s Parish history. Celebrating our golden jubilee 1958–2008 (Chichester: St Richard’s Church), p. 46. 8 CATHEDRAL, CITY AND DIOCESE 221 cathedral.27 The cathedral seems also to have neglected to cultivate the good opinion of the local press, a major determinant of local opinion. In 1968, a meeting of the chapter noted a persistent lack of information in the press about cathedral events; the dean undertook to do his best to keep them better informed.28 As Garth Turner noted, Hussey’s natural shyness—a disinclination towards the kind of occasional and superfcial social contact that such work involved—was coupled with a sense that the building itself, and its contents, were all the witness to the city that was required.29 Some in Chichester also noted an apparent failure of hospitality on Hussey’s part toward those who were not particularly interested in the arts. There had been some surprise when Hussey, without wife or children, had on his arrival wished to live in the very large and highly uneco- nomic Deanery, rather than a smaller residence in the close that would have been easier to manage. The reason soon became apparent: he was in need of the larger space in which to enjoy his own collection of works of art.30 Hilary Bryan-Brown recalled life in the ‘gallery’ as an esoteric one, as its curator moved the permanent displays around for his own pleasure.31 A particular delight seems to have been showing his guests around, along with colleagues on the staff. If Hussey showed a group of students around the cathedral, they might also have been invited in for a private view if they had shown a particular interest.32 In 1960, Hussey struck up a conversation with a teenage visitor while looking at the house in East Street in which John Keats once stayed; the conversation led to a ‘magical afternoon’ in the Deanery as Hussey showed the boy his collection.33 By contrast, local observers let the newly-arrived bishop Eric Kemp know that he had been unusually privileged to be allowed into the Deanery, into which few from the city were allowed and in which no-one

27 Garth Turner (1992) ‘“Aesthete, impresario and indomitable persuader”: Walter Hussey at St Matthew’s, Northampton and Chichester Cathedral’, Studies in Church History 28, p. 534. 28 Dean and Chapter Act Book, 16 April 1968, at WSRO Cap.I/3/17, p. 30. 29 Interview with Garth Turner. 30 Mason, ‘Walter Hussey’, p. 142. 31 Bryan-Brown, ‘Hussey at the Deanery’, p. 76. 32 Mason, ‘Walter Hussey’, pp. 143–144. 33 ‘Dean Walter Hussey: an anecdote’: typescript of account by one Stanley Clarke, at MS Hussey 109. 222 P. Webster had ever been known to be accommodated overnight. This was untrue in fact—Hilary Bryan-Brown remembered a great many guests from outside Chichester, which is confrmed by Hussey’s appointment diaries— but the perception around the city is signifcant.34 This, to an extent, matched the pattern in Northampton. As will have been evident in earlier chapters, Hussey was very hospitable to visiting artists and musicians and those who were already close friends. However, the historian of St Matthew’s recorded Hussey as one who ‘cherished his home privacy’ and on whom parishioners were not accustomed to call.35 Living ‘over the shop’ both in Northampton and Chichester, Hussey was in this way able to preserve some separation between professional and personal life, even if it did not meet the expectations of some.36 Key to understanding Hussey’s record as dean was his relationship with Lancelot Mason, archdeacon of Chichester from 1946, nine years before Hussey’s arrival, until 1973. Mason had earlier been one of George Bell’s domestic chaplains, and Bell placed Mason on the cathedral staff in 1949 as holder of the third residentiary canonry to be his eyes and ears.37 Eric Kemp, who arrived as bishop in 1974 after Mason had retired, had gathered that Mason had dominated the diocese; as Garth Turner recalled, his length of service with Bell gave him an unri- valled knowledge of both congregations and people. It seems clear that Mason expected to have a great deal of infuence over cathedral business, an infuence that Kemp thought had been too great. His successor was given the additional responsibility of a parish to dilute the effect.38 James Simpson-Manser, a close friend of Hussey, remembered a friendly relationship between Mason and Hussey, which extended as far as taking holidays together.39 In contrast, Trevor Beeson thought Mason ‘diffcult and stubborn’, and disappointed not to have been made dean

34 J. Haselock (ed.) (2006), Shy but not retiring: the memoirs of the Right Reverend Eric Waldram Kemp (London: Continuum), p. 173; interview with Hilary Bryan-Brown; appointment diaries for 1976–1977 at MS Hussey 37 and MS Hussey 38. 35 M. C. Harrison (1993) The Centenary History of St Matthew’s Church and Parish, Northampton (Edinburgh: Pentland), p. 118. 36 James Simpson-Manser recalled Hussey as a private man, and that this protectiveness of the Deanery was part of it: interview with the author. 37 Jasper, George Bell, p. 359. 38 Kemp, Shy but not retiring, p. 186; interview with Garth Turner. 39 Interview with James Simpson-Manser. 8 CATHEDRAL, CITY AND DIOCESE 223 of some other cathedral.40 Garth Turner has similarly written of Mason’s ‘iron will and settled views’.41 Chapter 5 noted the abandonment of Hussey’s frst scheme, to recolour the Sherburne screen in 1956–1957, an abandonment forced by resistance in the chapter.42 Possibly as a result of this, Hussey seems to have been content to leave much of the running of the cathedral to Mason, and rarely challenged him openly except with regard to the art. Certainly, Mason’s retirement tribute to Hussey had little to say on matters other than the art, and Patron of Art in turn says little of Mason. Despite the dispute over Piper’s tapestry noted in Chap. 6, Mason seems to have been happy that his dean should pursue his artistic work, and indeed to collaborate with it when it suited him. The two had collaborated enthusiastically in securing a higher standard of lay clerk for the choir in the late 1950s.43 It had been in Mason’s company that Hussey had seen Chagall’s Jerusalem windows in the Louvre, with which episode Hussey’s account of the later commission begins.44 As such, the division of labour in the cathedral seems to have been mutually agreeable. Arguably a stronger dean would have dealt with Mason differently; but the gaps in Hussey’s record as dean need to be seen in this context. To be clear, the argument of this chapter is not that Hussey was entirely indifferent to the city and the diocese at large, or that Chichester was a great deal less involved in matters of education or work with tourists than most other cathedrals. Rather, it is that the arts seem to have provided a lens through which all things were to be viewed. Despite the indifferent relationship between cathedral and city, the cathedral was in regular use as a venue for concerts of music, both singly and in connection with the Southern Cathedrals Festival. This connection was strengthened by the Chichester Festivities, which marked a subtle

40 Beeson, The Deans, p. 189. 41 Turner, ‘Walter Hussey’, p. 529. 42 Hussey to Miss Scott (Central Council for the Care of Churches), 28 January 1957, at CERC CATH/CS/CHI/1. 43 P. Barrett (1994) ‘The musical history of Chichester Cathedral’ in Hobbs (ed.), Chichester Cathedral, p. 261. 44 D. Coke and R. Potter (1994) ‘The Cathedral and modern art’ in Hobbs (ed.), Chichester Cathedral, p. 278; W. Hussey (1985) Patron of Art. The revival of a great tradition among modern artists (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p. 138; Mason to WH, 24 May 1977, at MS Hussey 360. 224 P. Webster symbolic shift in the relationship between cathedral and city, but one which hinged on the arts. A similar pattern was evident in relation to ecumenism. Hussey’s time as dean coincided with the historic Second Vatican Council at an international level, and the failed scheme to reunify Anglican and Methodist churches in England, which were matched by all manner of schemes of local cooperation between congregations. In cathedral cities, such schemes were diffcult to mount without the involvement of the cathedral, so large did they loom both physically and socially. Chichester had seen the remarkable conjunction, in Bell and Duncan-Jones, of a bishop and dean both intimately involved in international cooperation between the churches. In Chichester itself, a local Congregationalist minister wrote after Bell’s death in 1958 that he had ‘brought us together…and kept us together so that in our meeting, thinking and planning together, it was as though we were one Church already.’45 Hussey’s tenure saw some successes, to be sure. The preacher at a gala service during the Chichester 900 celebrations was a Methodist, and from 1968 there were monthly united services between the Anglican parish of St Peter in West Street (just by the cathedral’s Bell Tower) and the local Methodist and Congregationalist congregations. But the historians of local Methodism, writing in 1977 as Hussey retired, drily observed that ‘the ecumenical spirit moves more circumspectly in Bishop Bell’s cathedral city than in some other places.’46 There is little evidence of any sustained pushfulness on Hussey’s part, with regard to the other churches in the city, apart from in connection with the arts. In 1961, Hussey had been in contact with Langton Fox, priest of the Roman Catholic church of St Richard, over allowing a visiting French choir to use the cathedral as a concert venue; a plan that was to be foiled by Fox’s own bishop.47 This was an expansive time for the Roman Catholics of Chichester, with a new church building with contemporary stained glass from the French artist Gabriel Loire, but Hussey seems not to have

45 John Grant to Bell’s widow, Henrietta, October 1958, as quoted by A. Chandler (2016) George Bell, bishop of Chichester. Church, state and resistance in the age of dictatorship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans), p. 167. 46 J. Vickers and H. Vickers (1977) Methodism in a cathedral city. Southgate Methodist Church, Chichester, 1877–1977 (Chichester: Southgate Methodist Church Centenary Committee), p. 32. 47 Fox to WH, 28 March 1961, at MS Hussey 142. 8 CATHEDRAL, CITY AND DIOCESE 225 engaged with it.48 Both Bernstein and Chagall were Jews, and Hussey (amongst others) seems to have viewed the commissions as ecumenical gestures of a sort. Both drew on the Psalms, the common property of Jews and Christians; the signifcance was unlikely to have been missed by a generation amongst whom memories of the Holocaust were strong. Hussey certainly made the connection in relation to the Chichester Psalms, ‘a statement of praise that is oecumenical.’49 Others have made the connection explicit in relation to the Chagall window, but when placed against the detailed and concrete local and national action in inter-church and inter-faith relations, these were gestures at best.50 The relative lack of energy in relation to the life of the city at large is in contrast with the enthusiasm with which Hussey involved himself with the new Chichester Festival Theatre. This entirely new theatre, the frst to be built with a thrust stage, was opened in 1962 with Laurence Olivier as its frst artistic director. The prime mover, Leslie Evershed- Martin, formed a committee comprised of local offcials and nobil- ity, which also included Hussey as dean and Roger Wilson as bishop. In and of itself, this is of limited signifcance, since cathedrals are represented on many committees in cathedral cities. In this case, however, the connection with the cathedral seems to have been more than honorifc. Robert Potter, consultant architect to the cathedral, prepared preliminary designs, and when these proved not to be acceptable, the committee approached Philip Powell, one half of the partnership with Hidalgo Moya, which had built the iconic Skylon for the 1951 Festival of Britain.51 Powell was the son of Arnold Powell, holder of one of the cathedral prebends. The opening of the theatre was marked by a festal evensong at the cathedral at which Wilson preached, most likely at Hussey’s instigation.52 From that point, Hussey clearly attended the majority of productions,

48 St Richard’s Parish History, pp. 15–17. 49 Hussey to Bernstein, 1 August 1965, in N. Simeone ed. (2013), The Leonard Bernstein Letters (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 472. 50 A. Rosen (2013) ‘True lights: seeing the Psalms through Chagall’s church windows’ in Susan Gillingham (ed.) Jewish and Christian approaches to the Psalms: confict and convergence (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 105–118, at p. 114. 51 Ronald Hayman (1975) The First Thrust. The Chichester Festival Theatre (London: Davis-Poynter), pp. 22–24. 52 Order of service, 3 June 1962, at MS Hussey 173. 226 P. Webster at least until 1974.53 Kenneth Clark was also a regular visitor, for whom Hussey booked tickets on at least one occasion.54 There is also some evidence that Hussey contemplated some sort of commission of a new religious drama for the theatre and asked Laurie Lister, assistant to Olivier, for advice on the most suitable playwright to approach. Lister suggested Robert Bolt, but Hussey seems not to have taken the matter any further.55 A little later, Lister sent Hussey a copy of Mary of Magdala by Ernest Milton (1945), but it was not to be staged at either cathedral or theatre.56 Although these came to nothing, the contrast between the depth of Hussey’s engagement with the new theatre and his lack of enthusiasm elsewhere speaks of where his priorities lay.

53 Collected CFT programmes at MS Hussey 391. 54 Clark to WH, 23 April 1974, at MS Hussey 401. 55 Lister to WH, 8 September 1962, at MS Hussey 27. 56 Lister to WH, 19 April 1963, at MS Hussey 27. CHAPTER 9

Legacy

On retiring from Chichester in 1977, Hussey had perforce to leave the Deanery; but where to go? After twenty-two years, there were few ties to Northampton. There were friends in Chichester, but Hussey had decided some time earlier that it was to be London. No. 5, Trevor Street was part of a Regency development with Hyde Park to the north and the exclu- sive shops of the Brompton Road to the south. It was bought in 1972 for £50,000, a very considerable sum, largely paid for by the disposal of a Henry Moore, a Bonnard and some stocks and shares.1 As events turned out, the decision to move to London was perhaps the wrong one. James Simpson-Manser remembered a period of isolation, as many of the friends to whom Hussey had wanted to be near had died. Hussey also struggled with his health, which had not been robust for some time, and without any domestic help.2 There were projects to keep him occupied, once the fundraising for the Chagall window was complete. Hussey had long felt that Chichester lacked an art gallery, and made an offer to Chichester District Council to leave his collection to the city on the condition that it be housed at Pallant House, a Georgian town house until recently used as offces. Hussey was able to attend the opening of the new gallery

1 Completion statement on 5 Trevor Street, dated 24 August 1972, at MS Hussey 29; computation of capital gains tax for fnancial year 1972–1973, at MS Hussey 29. 2 Interview with James Simpson-Manser.

© The Author(s) 2017 227 P. Webster, Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain, Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-36910-9_9 228 P. Webster in May 1982.3 Neither did the making of new art cease with retirement. Hussey was presented with a new choral work as a gift on his seventieth birthday in 1979, by Anthony Piccolo to words by Richard Pleming.4 There was also another portrait, this time by David Hockney, now part of the collections of Northampton Museum and Art Gallery.5 In between, Hussey was also visited by interviewers for both print and broadcast media, to discuss both his own collection and the works at Northampton and Chichester.6 Much of 1983 and 1984 was occupied with the writing of Patron of Art, writing to old friends for permission to reproduce their letters, and seeing the book through the press.7 Patron of Art appeared in early 1985, only months before Hussey’s death on 25 July. His funeral took place at the church of St Paul in Knightsbridge, close to Trevor Street, with several Chichester clergy offciating, including Roger Wilson, formerly Hussey’s bishop. His ashes were interred in the St Mary Magdalene chapel at Chichester after a memorial service in July. Among the music sung was Mozart’s setting of Ave verum corpus, Hussey’s favourite piece of music, along with Berkeley’s The Lord is my shepherd and Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb.8 There were memorials created to Hussey, artistic and otherwise. Hussey left a sum of £10,000 to the University of Oxford to endow what became known as the Hussey Lectures, on the theme of the church and the arts.9 At Northampton, there was a fgure of the risen Christ by the local artist Malcolm Pollard; at Chichester an unsuccessful scheme

3 W. Hussey (1985) Patron of Art. The Revival of a Great Tradition Among Modern Artists (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), p. 145; D. Coke and N. Colyer (1990) The Fine Art Collections. Pallant House, Chichester (Chichester: Pallant House), p. 4. 4 Jesus walks on the water was commissioned by a friend, Kurt Weyrauch: manuscript at MS Hussey 382. 5 Hussey told the correspondent of the Northampton Independent that it had been commissioned by the Friends of the gallery and Hockney had improbably agreed to the small fee of £300: cutting, dated March 1985, at MS Hussey 281. 6 O. Matthews (1984) ‘Dean of Chichester. Rev. Walter Hussey’, The Antique Collector (April), 62–63; the various broadcasts are detailed in Chap. 1. 7 The correspondence and associated papers form MS Hussey 281. 8 Orders of service for both are at MS Hussey 109. 9 Resolution of thanks by the Hebdomadal Council of the University, 16 October 1978, at MS Hussey 493. 9 LEGACY 229 to commission Jaume Plensa, detailed below.10 As well as his own commissioning, Hussey’s legacy seems to have been an inspiration to others to attempt the same. One such case is that of Methuen Clarke, like Hussey a priest trained at Cuddesdon, who was curate at St Matthew’s from 1938 until 1949. Clarke left Northampton for the church of All Hallows, Wellingborough, where he also was to begin commissioning new works of art. The works at Wellingborough include a mural painting from Hans Feibusch (1952) and stained glass from Evie Hone and John Piper: Hussey thought Clarke a ‘loyal friend, also a collector, and an inspired commissioner of stained glass’.11 The two stayed in close touch until Hussey’s death. Hussey made the journey to Wellingborough to preach on the occasion of Clarke completing 25 years as vicar, and in return, it was Clarke who proposed a toast at the dinner for Hussey’s retirement from Chichester in 1977, and also he who led the intercessions at the Chichester memorial service for Hussey in 1985.12 Interviewed by the Northampton press after Hussey’s death, Clarke remembered Hussey’s active encouragement to him and others as patrons, but also a ‘man of wide sympathy and deep compassion with friends in all walks of life and indeed of all ages.’ He had made St Matthew’s ‘an acknowledged centre for the higher standards of Catholic worship in our diocese of Peterborough’.13 Hussey was also indirectly infuential through Keith Walker, most particularly at Winchester cathedral. Walker had been precentor at Chichester during Hussey’s last six years as dean, from 1971, and wit- nessed the making of the Chagall window and Collins altarpiece in particular. He was subsequently to commission several works, frst for All Saints in Basingstoke and fnally for Winchester; the names include Elisabeth Frink, Cecil Collins and Anthony Gormley. Tom Devonshire Jones has observed that ‘Hussey’s intelligent, subtle, shrewd, and warm

10 M.C. Harrison (1993) The centenary history of St. Matthew’s church and parish, Northampton (Edinburgh: Pentland), pp. 194–195. 11 J. Piper (1985) ‘Introduction’ in Hussey, Patron of Art, p.v; F. Spalding (2009) John Piper, Myfanwy Piper. Lives in Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 419. 12 Typescript of WH’s sermon, 31 October 1974, at MS Hussey 266; menu card for the dinner, at the Chichester Assembly Rooms, 4 July 1977, at MS Hussey 108; order of service at MS Hussey 109. 13 Photocopied article, entitled ‘Church’s patron of arts dies’ from unidentifed Northampton newspaper, at MS Hussey 109. 230 P. Webster ministry was thin in logic.’ Walker, more analytical in approach, did not always fnd it easy to work with such an ‘ever-intuitive temperament’: as we saw in Chap. 6, they disagreed over the worth of Cecil Collins’ work.14 However, the infuence was clear, and Walker was to pay a tribute to Hussey some years later, albeit not an unreserved one. Hussey’s project had been ‘supremely successful’, the product of ‘discrimination and courage’.15 This infuence was personal, and Hussey’s ministry was built on the relationships he was able to form. In 1968, Thomas Monnington, president of the Royal Academy of Arts, invited Hussey to become chaplain to the Academy, replacing Geoffrey Fisher, by now long since retired as archbishop of Canterbury. Nearly twenty years since Moore’s Madonna had been denounced at the Academy banquet by Monnington’s predecessor Alfred Munnings, Hussey was asked to join its offcials: the irony was surely not lost on him. Hussey professed himself honoured, but refused. Much of his work had been with artists who had not been connected with the Academy, which was widely viewed as a conservative institution, and Hussey thought such a move might be misunderstood.16 Such an honorifc role rarely involves the kind of work that a hospital or prison chaplain would recognise, but in his own informal way, the whole of Hussey’s career had already been as a chaplain to the artists and musicians he patronised and befriended. As we saw in Chap. 3, in the case of Britten and Pears, these friendships were shaped by a shared outsider status as homosexual men. The signifcance of Hussey delivering the Westminster Abbey tribute to Britten (with which this study began) was not lost on some of his correspondents. One had known Hussey at St Matthew’s as a young man, and had been shown Hussey’s collection of art. Now living in London with his partner, he was glad that it was to be Hussey that paid tribute to Britten. He and Pears had shown that stable, positive and creative

14 T. Devonshire Jones (1994) ‘Priest and Patron’, Art Quarterly of the National Art Collections Fund, no. 20, pp. 37–39. 15 K. Walker (1990) ‘Visual art in churches in England in recent times’ in J. Robinson (ed.) The Journey. A search for the role of contemporary art in religious and spiritual life (Lincoln: Lincolnshire County Council and Redcliffe Press) pp. 104–110, at p. 104. 16 Monnington to WH, 8 November 1968, at MS Hussey 105; WH to Monnington, 14 November 1968, at MS Hussey 105. 9 LEGACY 231 homosexual relationships were possible in pressurised conditions before 1967, and many gay men owed them both a great debt.17 A year earlier Hussey had offciated at another memorial service, for Paul Dehn. Best known as a screenwriter, Dehn was also a librettist, for William Walton and Lennox Berkeley. Dehn had also been the life partner of James Bernard for thirty years: another artistic gay couple who had lived twenty years under the shadow of the criminal law. Bernard and Dehn were the old and close friends through which Hussey had approached Walton (at a dinner party) to compose what became the Chichester service (Dehn and the Waltons had been close friends since meeting in 1964).18 The service for Dehn at St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1975 included Bernard’s Nunc Dimittis for Chichester, along with part of the Berkeley Festival Anthem for Northampton—most likely the middle section (“O that I once past changing were/Fast in thy Paradise, where no fower can wither!”); John Birch was the organist.19 Bernard had frst met Hussey as a schoolboy at Wellington, when (in place of Britten) Hussey entertained a party of Wellingtonians at the Café Royal in London in the summer of 1943, after the group had been to see Peter Pears sing Verdi’s La Traviata as Britten’s guests. Hussey most likely knew of the Café Royal’s reputation at this time as an informal home for homosexual men from the arts.20 While stationed at the army code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park, Bernard was a regular guest at the vicarage at Northampton. ‘He was the best kind of advertise- ment for Christianity’, Bernard recalled, ‘in that he never thrust it down one’s throat at all. If one went to stay with him for the weekend, as I did frequently, he would never say, “Now, I hope you’ll be at communion in the morning!” He would say, “Sleep as long as you like—and Mrs Cotton will do your breakfast.”’ Bernard was among the small group who were treated to a private recital by Kirsten Flagstad at the vicarage in 1947—‘it was all so charming and Flagstad was so fat and cozy’— and the correspondence continued through the Chichester commission

17 Peter Forster to WH, 2 July 1977 and 11 March 1977, at MS Hussey 303. 18 Hussey, Patron of Art, p. 133; S. Walton (1988) William Walton. Behind the Facade (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 194, 197, 201. 19 Order of service at MS Hussey 173. 20 M. Houlbrook (2005) Queer London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 86. 232 P. Webster in 1968 until the 1970s.21 In the correspondence while Bernard was at Bletchley, the younger man (still only just twenty years old) poured out his feelings: of his affair with a married man in London, of his infatuation with another man whom he had met with Hussey in Northampton, and of his early relationship with Dehn. The several poems which he sent to Hussey for comment can hardly be read as anything but sexual; they are not themselves explicit, but the accompanying letters make the matter clear.22 It is inconceivable that Bernard could have been so open had he not known of Hussey’s own sexuality. Another gay man amongst Hussey’s collaborators was Lennox Berkeley. Chapter 4 showed that the introduction to Hussey was through Britten, who had described the atmosphere at St Matthew’s as sympathetic. This it clearly was in a musical sense, but it seems likely that Britten knew Hussey would feel no diffculty with Berkeley’s sexuality. Britten had been the object of Berkeley’s affections in 1936, but Berkeley had lost out eventually to Pears.23 In early 1945 Berkeley had just met Freda Bernstein, a colleague at the BBC, with whom he was to enjoy a long and happy marriage, but was at the same time living unhappily with his partner Peter Fraser. The chaotic and unhappy triangle of relationships between the three continued throughout the making of the Festival Anthem.24 If Berkeley did mention any of this background to Hussey, he was likely to receive a sympathetic hearing. Although there is no evidence to establish the fact, it is also possible that the rapport that Hussey and Leonard Bernstein struck up on meeting in 1965 was aided by an awareness of their shared sexuality.25 Hussey’s pastoral touch was also sure with others. Chapter 6 described the warmth of the friendship that had built up with Graham

21 D. Huckvale (2006) James Bernard, composer to Count Dracula. A critical biography (Jefferson, NC: McFarland), pp. 22, 25, 28. 22 Letters from Bernard to WH, 9 November 1945 and 3 December 1945, and associated poems, at MS Hussey 396. 23 P. Kildea (2014) Benjamin Britten. A life in the twentieth century (London: Penguin), p. 123; H. Carpenter (1992) Benjamin Britten. A biography (London: Faber), pp. 110–111. 24 T. Scotland (2010) Lennox and Freda (Norwich: Michael Russell), pp. 352–355, 361–371. 25 On the complexities of Bernstein’s sexuality and his marriage, see H. Burton (1994) Leonard Bernstein (London: Faber), pp. 211, 399, 434–436. 9 LEGACY 233 and Kathleen Sutherland, during a long correspondence punctuated by frequent visits and shared holidays. Hussey seems to have given his collaborators the safety in which to speak frankly and personally. He had been a collector of the work of Ivon Hitchens, who lived not far from Chichester, since the 1950s without ever apparently attempting to commission Hitchens for Chichester. Although Hitchens professed no def- nite faith himself, the friendship was close enough that Hussey had suggested, when Hitchens was in hospital in 1976, that he should be remembered in the cathedral’s prayers: a suggestion to which Hitchens was open.26 Hussey kept in touch with Kenneth Clark during the protracted illness of his wife Jane and (contrary to the published requests of the family) sent a wreath to mark her death in November 1976. Far from being affronted, Clark thought it remarkably kind—the wreath was the nicest there, he reported—and after the funeral wrote intimately of her last moments. Sensitive to the signifcance of anniversa- ries to the bereaved, Hussey wrote a year later.27 Hussey also wrote to Ceri Richards’ wife after his death in 1971. Frances Richards thought it a beautiful letter at a diffcult time, and asked Hussey’s help with the memorial service at St James Piccadilly; Hussey gave the address.28 Although not particularly visible as a pastor to the wider congregation at Chichester, his instincts were sharp with those whom he already knew. As both men approached retirement, Kenneth Clark paid a tribute to Hussey as patron of the arts in which was a prophecy, hidden in plain sight. Hussey was not simply a great patron, but ‘the last great patron of art in the Church of England.’ This book has sought to document Hussey’s work as a patron of all the arts, whilst also setting him alongside others whose achievements, although substantial, were obscure to Clark. But was Hussey the last, and if so, why? Clark believed that the Church of England had done nothing to recognise Hussey’s work; a remark borne either of ignorance of the expert status Hussey had achieved by 1975 (as shown in the Introduction), or of the limited means the Church in fact had at its disposal to honour anyone for anything, or perhaps both. Either way, Clark was ‘afraid we may have to wait

26 Hitchens to WH, 12 May 1976, at MS Hussey 414. 27 Clark to WH, 17 November 1976 and 3 November 1977, at MS 401. 28 Frances Richards to WH, 18 November 1971, at MS Hussey 368; ‘Memorial service: Mr C. Richards’, The Times, 16 December 1971, p. 17. 234 P. Webster a long time for a conjunction of aesthete, impresario and indomitable persuader’ such as Hussey.29 Forty years on, Clark’s pessimism would seem to have been mis- placed. The cathedrals of the UK are now replete with works of art from prominent contemporary artists: the 2014 video installation in St Paul’s Cathedral by Bill Viola, entitled Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), or the work by Tracey Emin in Liverpool Cathedral are just two examples. The 2016 London Festival of Contemporary Church Music was the ffteenth such festival, during which time it had commissioned more than 60 new works. But this apparent success masks the slowness with which it was achieved. Writing in 2005, Tom Devonshire Jones, an observer and participant in the scene since the 1960s, thought the Northampton pieces and Coventry Cathedral ‘false dawns’; the churches’ rediscovery of the arts dated from the 1990s, he thought.30 Those artists interviewed in the course of the enquiries of the Faculty Jurisdiction Commission in 1983 saw little in the way of a new spirit of patronage in the Church of England.31 To understand the timing of the subsequent development is beyond the scope of this book, but it may be asked how far Hussey’s mode of patronage was a one that could be followed by others. We have already considered the infuence Hussey had on at least two of those with whom he had worked—Methuen Clarke and Keith Walker—and it is likely that there were others like them. But how far was Hussey’s model of informal consultation with experts one that could be emulated? The prospects of success, in 2017, for a parish priest in simply asking an art critic of a broadsheet newspaper for advice, or the director of the National Gallery, seem rather remote. In the 1940s, Hussey was still able to assume that experts outside the Church would understand enough about the symbolic content of the faith, and have suffcient sympathy with it, to give advice. The secularisation of the UK since then has forced the churches to abandon any such assumption.

29 K. Clark (1975) ‘Dean Walter Hussey. A tribute to his patronage of the arts’ in W. Hussey (ed.) Chichester 900 (Chichester: The Cathedral), p. 72. 30 T. Devonshire Jones and G. Howes (2005) English cathedrals and the visual arts: patronage, policies and provision 2005 (London: Art and Christianity Enquiry), p. 1. 31 Church of England (1984) The Continuing Care of Churches and Cathedrals. Report of the Faculty Jurisdiction Commission (London: Church Information Offce Publishing), pp. 203–212. 9 LEGACY 235

Hussey’s approach was always to engage with the church council at Northampton, or the Chichester chapter or Friends, but at a later stage in the process than would now be acceptable. In general, Hussey would have chosen an artist or composer, and between them they would have settled upon a subject before it was put to any kind of consultation. The task was then one of persuasion and reassurance, and rarely did that process signifcantly infuence the fnished work, with the exception of the Piper tapestry. Paul Bayley has rightly noted the contrast with the later commission from Jaume Plensa at Chichester (2009–2012) to mark Hussey’s work, which involved specialist arts consultants and multi- ple stages of planning and public consultation.32 The autonomy which Hussey enjoyed, and to some extent created for himself, is harder to jus- tify in 2017 than it was in 1947 or 1977. There were other reasons why Hussey’s legacy was not a usable one for those who might have wished to build on it. Firstly, there was a lack of theological support or practical guidance from others to match Hussey’s practical example. Hussey himself wrote nothing of theological substance on the issue, and his memoir did not appear until 1985. The more recent upsurge of interest in the interplay between theology and the arts dates from the late 1980s and later, at least in England.33 Hussey also did little to build an infrastructure—competitions, endowed funds, societies, publications, events—that might help to continue the work after he retired. Save for the Hussey Lectures, little remains of him but the works themselves. But the model was less usable for more fundamental reasons. Hussey’s theology of the arts was formed in the Anglo-Catholic milieu of the inter-war period, and was given fresh charge by the crisis of 1939–1945. But by the time he retired, this Catholic view of culture, creation and the artistic act was in retreat. In the 1920s and 1930s, writers such as Bell realised that the church could not hope to regain the attention of

32 P. Bayley (2010) ‘Contemporary art and Church commissions: boom or bust?’ in L. Moffatt and E. Daly, Contemporary art in British churches (London: Art and Christianity Enquiry), p. 15; the Hussey Memorial Commission, from Jaume Plensa, was rejected twice by the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England, and the commission abandoned: ‘Sculpture proposal rejected’, Church Times, 8 February 2012. 33 G. Howes (1997) ‘Theology and the arts: visual arts’ and J. Begbie (1997) ‘Theology and the arts: music’, both in D. Ford (ed.) The Modern Theologians (2nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 669–685 and 686–699. 236 P. Webster

‘Modern Man’ without engaging with and speaking to him through the art in which he was expressing himself—a mission imperative. As was shown in Chap. 6, this sense was sharpened and made more urgent as the perception of theological and linguistic crisis mounted in the 1960s. At this time, it was still possible for Hussey to take the essentials of the arguments of Bell, Duncan-Jones or Percy Dearmer and recast them in terms of the arts being one of many languages the Church must speak in order to communicate with those outside. By the time Hussey retired, however, theologians from across the Christian spectrum were questioning the integral idea of religion, culture and art on which Hussey’s whole enterprise was founded.34 Such a Catholic theology of culture was predicated on the existence of an artistic core. In post-war Britain, cultural brokers such as Kenneth Clark could, of course, hold some artists in higher regard than others, but within a general consensus over what art was, what it was for, and how one might distinguish between good, bad and indifferent. But the following years saw an unprecedented fracturing of style, media and method, whether it was pop art or punk rock, electronic music or conceptual art. These phenomena have little in common, but their parallel development presented ecclesiastical patrons with a diffculty. Which of these was most likely to elicit the authentic response of an artist ‘to interpret in sensible form the truth and beauty that has been seen’?35 Which of these art forms should be found in English churches to show the connectedness of the arts and the creative nature of God? The late years of Hussey’s career coincided with the last period when such questions could easily be answered. In this respect, the late Hussey commissions at Chichester, created by old men on behalf of a contemporary who was about to retire, have a doubly valedictory quality: to Hussey as friend and patron, but also to a model of religion and culture which had run its course. The more recent revival of the religious arts has needed to build on different foundations.

34 H. R. Rookmaaker (1970) Modern art and the death of a culture (London: Inter- Varsity Fellowship); H. Küng (1981) Art and the question of meaning (London: SCM Press). 35 The phrase of A.S. Duncan-Jones, as quoted in full in Chap. 5. Bibliography

Manuscripts Church of England Record Centre, London Cathedrals Advisory Committee papers Central Council for the Care of Churches papers

Lambeth Palace Library, London George Bell Papers

Pallant House, Chichester Walter Hussey fle

Tate Gallery Archives, London Kenneth Clark correspondence

West Sussex Record Offce, Chichester Capitular Records (Chichester Cathedral) Episcopal Records (Bishops of Chichester) Walter Hussey Papers

Interviews Hilary Bryan-Brown, 30 November 2015 David Burton Evans, 20 November 2015

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 237 P. Webster, Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain, Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-36910-9 238 Bibliography

James Simpson-Manser, 3 February 2017 Garth Turner, 8 February 2017

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A Beeson, Trevor, 30, 215–217, 219, Adams, John, 196 222 Albright, William, 206–208 Behrend, Mary, 41, 42, 66 Amos, R.C., 69 Bell, George, 3, 5, 27, 29, 36, 37, 38, Anderson, Colin, 114 39, 40, 46, 76, 108, 121, 122, Arnold, Malcolm, 206 123, 124, 125, 127–129, 133, Laudate Dominum, 94–95 136–139, 146, 153, 166, 215, Arts Council, 10, 185 219, 222 Arundel screen, 143, 152, 153 Benua, Aleksandr, 39 Association of Anglican Musicians, Berkeley, Lennox, 93, 232 208 Another Spring, 209–211 Auden, W.H., 62 Festival Anthem, 87–90, 92 ‘Litany and Anthem for St The Lord is my shepherd, 208–209, Matthew’s Day’, 102–105, 127 228 Berkeley, Michael, 88 Bernard, James, 200–201, 205, B 231–232 Baker, Janet, 209–210 Bernstein, Leonard, 225, 232 Bakst, Leon, 39 Chichester Psalms, 189–198, 208 Barker, Charles, 66 Betjeman, John, 18, 51, 104, 125, Barnsley, Edward, 174 126–127, 165, 188 Bate, Jennifer, 89 Birch, Frank, 117 Bayley, Paul, 235 Birch, John, 142, 187–188, 190–192, BBC, 10, 117, 124 194, 200–202, 205–207, 209, Symphony Orchestra, 56–57 231 Bishop Otter College, 165, 170–171

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 249 P. Webster, Church and Patronage in 20th Century Britain, Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700-2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-36910-9 250 Index

Blacking, Randoll, 144–145, 153 Jerusalem windows, 182, 223 Blagden, Claude, 79, 135 The Arts to the Glory of God Bliss, Arthur, 57, 58, 100 (window), 180–186 Blunt, Anthony, 18 Windows at Tudeley (Kent), 182, Bolt, Robert, 226 184 Bond Street Galleries, 22 Chagall, Valentina, 183 Boosey and Hawkes, 61, 104 Chaliapin, Fyodor, 22 Boosey, Leslie, 62 Charleston (school), 21 Boult, Adrian, 57–58, 64, 94 Chelsea School of Art, 72, 108, 168 Boyd Neel Orchestra, 97, 192 Chichester Brent-Smith, Alexander, 37 Congregationalists, 224 Bridgwater, Shepheard and Epstein Lord Mayor, 220 (architects), 171 Methodists, 224 Britten, Benjamin, 1, 5, 31, 33, 42, Roman Catholics, 220–221, 47, 59–71, 78, 87, 88, 93, 94, 224–225 102–103, 110, 167, 177, 200, Chichester Cathedral 202–203, 205, 230–232 Bishop Bell Tea Room, 217 Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Bishop Bell Trustees, 200 Vittoria, 1, 103–104 Cathedral Works Organisation, 215 Rejoice in the Lamb, 1, 62–63, Friends of, 145, 169, 172, 207, 235 65–68, 77, 87, 89, 91, 96, 104, Mary Magdalene Chapel, 145, 124, 192, 228 153–154, 159 Bromley College of Art, 169 Sherburne screen, 144–145, 170 Brooks, Eric, 183 Chichester District Council, 227 Browne-Wilkinson, A. R., 140, 141, Chichester Festival Theatre, 169–170, 220 225–226 Bryan-Brown, Hilary, 20, 44, 46–47, Chichester Festivities, 203–204, 223 213, 218, 221–222 Chichester Theological College, 218 Burton Evans, David, 47, 178–179, Churchill, Winston, 137 188, 216, 218 Clarke, Geoffrey Butt, James Work for Bishop Otter College, 165 Bless the Lord, O my soul, 94 Works for Chichester, 131, 163–165 Clarke, Methuen, 56, 66, 229 Clark, Jane, 78, 114, 233 C Clark, Kenneth, 2, 25, 29, 42, 72, Campaign for homosexual equality, 46 75–80, 108, 113–114, 129–131, Canterbury Cathedral, 63, 96 133–134, 162, 168, 184–185, Casson, Hugh, 169 225, 233 Central Council for the Care of Collingwood, Lawrence, 66 Churches, Cathedrals Advisory Collins, Cecil, 177–179, 230 Committee, 144, 153 Icon of Divine Light, 178–179 Chagall, Marc, 225 Icon of Divine Love, 179 Index 251

Comper, Ninian, 127 Eliot, T.S., 37, 101–102, 105, 125 Contemporary Art Society, 125, 130, Epstein, Jacob, 122, 130, 141 169, 177 Etchells, Frederick, 145 Cork, Richard, 4 Evershed-Martin, Leslie, 225 Cotton, Ada, 59, 231 Every, George, 105 Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, 10, 29, 56, 124, 166 F Coventry Cathedral, 41, 122, 151, Feibusch, Hans, 24–25, 29, 33–35, 157, 162–163, 166, 171 36, 108, 113, 122, 131, 137– Cox, Muriel, 177 139, 141, 152, 229 Crashaw, Richard, 92 Finzi, Gerald, 90–93 Craxton, Harold, 56, 98, 100 Lo, the full fnal sacrifce, 96, 116 Cross, Joan, 66, 97 Flagstad, Kirsten, 22, 90, 97–100, 231 Crozier, Eric, 38, 64 Foster, Paul, 180 Cuddesdon College, 19, 20–22, 229 Fox, Langton, 224 Cudlipp, Hugh, 2, 204 Fry, Christopher, 37–39

D G Daly, John, 93 Ghéon, Henri, 38 d’Avigdor Goldschmid, Lady, 182 Gill, Eric, 42, 110 Day-Lewis, Cecil, 102 Graham, Eric, 21 Dearmer, Percy, 26, 140 Greaves, Arthur, 71 de Candole, Henry, 23, 139, 149 Gregory, Eric, 101 Dehn, Paul, 117, 201, 231–232 Grigson, Geoffrey, 83, 104, 127 de Kooning, Willem, 132 Grimes, John, 46 de la Mare, Walter, 102 Grünewald, Matthias, 112 Denny, William, 81 Devonshire Jones, Tom, 31, 44, 125, 178, 218, 229, 234 H Downes, Ralph, 19 Hamet Gallery, 177 Drewry, Valentine, 56 Hawkins, Horace, 141 Duncan-Jones, Arthur Stuart, 137, Hayward, Marjorie, 56 139–141, 153, 217, 220 Headington, Christopher, 69 Duncan, Ronald, 38 O supreme bliss, 93–94 Durufé, Maurice, 95 Hepworth, Barbara, 108, 130, 184 Dyall, Valentine, 103 Herbert, George, 88–89, 104 Hicks, Nugent, 24 Hiroshige, Utagawa, 134 E Hitchens, Ivon, 108, 132–133, 233 Elgar, Edward, 19, 20 Hockney, David, 228 El Greco, 109 Holst, Gustav, 34 252 Index

Holtby, Robert, 6, 43, 180, 215, 23–24, 135–137; posthumous 219–220 note, 2, 4–5; retirement, 46, Horsley, Colin, 97 209–211, 227–228 Hort, F. F., 17 patronage, 12–14; art, 71–84, Howells, Herbert, 96, 201–202 108–118, 156–86.. See also Howes, Frank, 66, 67, 199, 202 individual works by artist; Hugh-Jones, E. M., 19 emulated by others, 229–230, Hussey, Christopher Rowden, 17, 18, 234; fees and funding, 75, 90, 21, 49, 127 92, 98, 102, 106, 109, 110, Hussey, John Walter Atherton 158–159, 171–172, 185–186, as dean, 145–146, 213–226 191, 195–196, 200, 209, 227; as parish priest, 75, 112, 125–127, legacy, 233–236; music, 54–55, 145, 214, 222 58–71, 85–97, 187–211; broadcasting, 2, 87, 90, 117, 124, poetry, 100–108; reception of, 188 67, 79–81, 116–118, 122, 123, character; 159–163, 174–176, 196–198 deference to experts, 22, 34, 76, tastes, 19–20, 22, 58, 72, 73, 92, 84, 112, 114, 119, 126, 133; 98, 100, 130, 228; as art determination, 45, 55, 57; collector, 19–20, 39, 42–43, friendships, 1, 47, 69–71, 155– 111, 128, 131, 132–134, 154, 156, 231–233; hospitality, 59, 168–169, 227 169, 195, 217, 219, 221–222, theology; 231; pastoral sense, 232–233; Anglo-Catholicism, 30–31, 52, 71; persuasiveness, 74–75, 98–100, architecture, 40–41; art history, 110, 112–113, 146, 162–163, understanding of, 32, 74; arts 171–172, 235; sexuality, in general, 6, 8, 27, 30–35, 61, 45–47, 69, 156, 230–232; shy- 74, 119, 127, 140, 180–181, ness, 44, 218, 221; vocation as 235–236; cathedrals, role of, priest, 20–21, 45–46, 213 149, 151–152, 221; drama, interviews, 81, 228 37–40; ecumenism, 194, 220, life and career; 224–225; literature, 107–108; Chichester, appointment as dean, music, 20, 98, 192, 197–198; 49, 136–138; childhood patronage, 32–35, 130, 166; and youth, 17–18, 34, 37, reading of, 41, 42, 128, 132; 49; death, 228; education, visual art, 79–81 18–22, 45; family back- writings, 20; Chichester 900, 131; ground, 17; honours, gifts and Hussey Papers, 5, 7, 17, 44, memorials, 2, 4, 209–211, 94, 103, 179; Patron of Art, 2, 228–229; Kensington, appoint- 4, 6, 8, 17, 30, 34, 90, 94, 95, ment to curacy at, 22–23; 97, 100, 105, 107, 178, 200, Northampton, appointment 211, 223, 228; periodicals, 123 to, 49; offers of other posts, Index 253

Hussey, John Rowden, 17, 18, 21, 24, Marlborough College, 18, 23, 24 34, 49–50, 51, 52, 75–77, 79, Marlborough Gallery, 169 81, 137, 214 Marq, Charles, 182–185 Hussey, Lilian Mary, 17, 49, 110 Marriott, Charles, 64 Hutchinson, Deryck, 194 Martin, Frank, 95 Masefeld, John, 34 Mason, Lancelot, 44, 141, 153, 172, J 187, 218, 222–223 Jacobs, Arthur, 197 Matisse, Henri, 167 Jeannerat, Pierre, 116 Mellers, Wilfred, 196 Jones, Cheslyn, 161, 175 Milner White, Eric, 79, 96 Jones, David, 42–43, 133 Milton, Ernest, 226 Joyce, Robert, 199 Minton, John, 133 Molesworth, H.D., 125 Monnington, Thomas, 230 K Moore, Henry, 33, 108, 114, 129, Kandinsky, Wassily, 134, 169 132–133, 168, 184 Kelly, Bryan, 198–200 Madonna and Child, 65, 71–84, 88, Kemp, Eric, 3, 221–222 90, 109, 116–118, 122, 123n, Kenna, Victor, 173 124, 128, 130, 135, 141, 152, Kessell, Mary, 124 162, 167, 192, 205 Kierkegaard, Søren, 104 Moore, Irina, 114 King, Charles J., 56, 86 Mortlock, C.B., 141 Knoll, The (preparatory school), 17 Mullins, Edwin, 182 Munnings, Alfred, 81, 122, 230 Musgrave, Clifford, 27 L Lang, Norman, 50, 66–67 Lantz, Robert, 195 N Law, William, 107 Nash, Paul, 132–133 Leese, Oliver, 126n National Gallery, 72, 76–77, 108–109, Lippiett, Vernon, 218 234 Lister, Laurie, 226 New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Lowe, H.H., 22 191 Lowther Clarke, William, 141 Newton, Eric, 25, 33, 42, 72, 76, 81, Lurçat, Jean, 170 113–114, 123, 159 Nicholas, Michael, 94–95 Nicholson, Ben, 108, 130 M Nicholson, Norman, 126 Maclagan, Eric, 27, 114, 126 The Outer Planet, 105–108 Macneice, Louis, 18 Nicolson, Benedict, 116–117 254 Index

Norman, Barry, 133 Piper, Myfanwy, 114 Norris, Mabel, 161 Pleming, Richard, 228 Northampton Plensa, Jaume, 235 Angel Hotel, 73 Pointing, Horace, 28 New Theatre, 37 Pollard, Malcolm, 228 St Matthew’s, 4, 17, 18, 51–53 Poole, Joseph, 67, 96–97 Northampton Bach Choir, 94 Porter, Andrew, 210 Northampton College of Art, 163 Porter, Peter, 68 Northampton Museum and Art Potter, Robert, 142, 145, 154, 156, Gallery, 132, 168, 228 165, 169, 170–172, 179, 182, Northamptonshire Regiment, 64, 87 215, 217, 225 Powell, Arnold, 225 Powell, Dilys, 117 O Powell, Philip, 225 Oxford Orchestral Society, 19 Pudney, John, 112 Oxford, University of Keble College, 18–19, 23, 24 R Rawsthorne, Alan, 85, 91 P Read, Herbert, 83 Pallant House, 111, 132, 168, Reid, Christopher, 6 227–228 Reilly, Charles, 29 Pasmore, Victor, 134 Reyntiens, Patrick, 170 Pattison, George, 4 Richards, Ceri, 233 Payne, Anthony, 197 Copes for Chichester, 152, 168–169 Pears, Peter, 1, 60, 63, 69–71, 87, 93, Saudade, 133, 168 110, 177, 201, 231 Richards, Edith, 81 Philomusica of London. See Boyd Neel Richards, Frances, 233 Orchestra Ridley, Jasper, 76 Phipps, Pickering, 51 Rose, John Piccolo, Anthony, 228 Festive Hymn, 94 Pinton, Ateliers, 174 Rothenstein, John, 120 Piper, John, 108, 114, 121, 126, 129, Rothko, Mark, 132 132, 165–167, 182, 189, 229 Royal Academy of Arts, 22, 230 Chichester Cathedral from the Royal Albert Hall, 22 Deanery, 133 Royal Institute of British Architects, Cope for Northampton, 167–168 2, 144 Painting of St Matthew’s, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Northampton, 168 19, 22, 98 Tapestry for Chichester, 133, Rubbra, Edmund, 97 152–153, 169–176, 235 The Revival, 42, 85–87, 92 Index 255

S Noli me tangere, 87, 131, 152, Sackville-West, Edward, 25, 62 156–163, 169 Sadie, Stanley, 196–197 Portrait of Walter Hussey, 133 Sargent, Malcolm, 126 Sutherland, Kathleen, 78, 109, 156, Schwitters, Kurt, 134 159 Scott, Anthony, 92 Sylvester, David, 84 Scott, R.J.R., 126n Semino, Norina, 56, 87 Shawe-Taylor, Desmond, 98 T Shaw, George Bernard, 34 Tate Gallery, 22, 125, 132 Simpson-Manser, James, 47, 222, 227 Tavener, John, 88 Skelton, John, 43 Taylor, Jeremy, 104 Smart, Christopher, 62–63, 104 Tegetmeier, Denis, 43 Smith, Matthew, 95, 108 Temple, William, 27 Solomon, Cyril, 191 Thalben-Ball, George, 56, 60 Southern Cathedrals Festival, 190, Thicknesse, C. C., 24 194–195, 199–203, 223 Tippett, Michael, 63–65, 66, 97, 121 Spalding, Frances, 4 Fanfare No.1, 64–65 Spence, Basil, 40–41, 122, 125, Tovey, Lord, 126n 144–145, 154, 171 Turner, Garth, 4, 8, 18, 142, 217– Spencer, Earl, 66, 114 218, 221–223 Spencer, Stanley, 41–42, 108 St Albans Cathedral, 24 Stancliffe, David, 3 V Stanton, Walter Kendall, 57, 59, 66, Van den Heuvel, Albert, 151–152 90 Vaughan, Henry, 86–87, 89, 93 St Mary Abbots, 21, 22 Vaughan, Keith, 110 Stone, Reynolds, 163 Vaughan Williams, Ralph, 95 St Paul Vicarage Gate, 22–23, 56 Victoria and Albert Museum, 22 Strauss, Richard, 34 Stravinsky, Igor, 95 Strong, Thomas Banks, 21, 55, 101 W Sumsion, Herbert, 92 Wagner, Richard, 19 Sussex Churches Art Council, 137, Walker, Keith, 179, 218, 229–230 219 Walton, William, 54–55, 79 Sussex Churches Campaign, 171, 215 Chichester Service, 205–206, 231 Sussex, University of, 2 War Artists Advisory Committee, 15, Sutherland, Graham, 33, 41, 47, 78, 29, 166 87, 129, 132, 154–155, 205 Watteau, Jean Antoine, 133–134 Crucifxion, 42, 108–118, 122, 124, Weidenfeld, George, 2, 204 167, 171 Weitz, Guy, 56 256 Index

Westminster Abbey, 1, 103, 230 Wilson, Roger, 142, 194, 218, 225, Whiteman, H.G., 118 228 Wilkinson, Denys, 2 Winnington-Ingram, Arthur Foley, Williamson, Harold, 66, 72–73, 108, 18, 23 114 Woods, E.S., 66 Williamson, Hugh Ross, 38 Wyton, Alec, 90, 99–100, 104, 124, Williamson, Malcolm, 121, 198, 200 199–200, 206–208 Williams, Rowan, 4