Oral history interview with W. G. Constable, 1972 July -1973 June Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with W.G. Constable from July 1972 - June 1973. The interview took place in [Place], and was conducted by Robert Brown for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The Archives of American Art has reviewed the transcript and has made corrections and emendations. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview ROBERT: BROWN: Just say anything so I can get your voice. W.G. CONSTABLE: Well, thank God we didn't have a thunderstorm last night, because we've had far too many recently. [Audio Break.] W.G. CONSTABLE: —in Derby, England. Derby is a fairly large town, about 150,000, so that there were plenty of facilities, plenty of things to see and, on the whole, for an English provincial town, a good deal in the way of music and so on. All this, and a certain amount of actual—we called them "picture shows," and so on. Works of art were fairly scarce. There was not a bad museum, but very rarely anything—but, on the other hand, all my mother's relatives lived in London. And so I was often there as a boy, a good deal. And so I did see a good many theatrical productions and was taken many times to places like the National Gallery. So I got a pretty fair acquaintance with works of art. As a comparatively small boy, I went to school—and this is a puzzling thing for Americans—at a small public school. [00:02:04] But it is not public in the American sense at all. It was a private school. And there I was lucky because it had an excellent staff and one that carried one quite outside perfectly ordinary things. It embraced a first class classical scholar and a very good mathematician and, among other things, an English country gentleman who had big estates in Leicestershire. He actually taught us Shakespeare. This is all rambling—but it was a most important thing in my life because he always ran Shakespeare by allotting parts in the play to members of the class. And you'd spend the hour taking that part; you'd learn it, or bring it back again by reading it. So you got very familiar with Shakespeare as a working instrument, not as something you studied as English literature, but as something that you worked with or worked with you. As a player I well remember I was cast in the part of Sir Toby Belcher, on my vacation, and things of that kind. Now those are the things which at school were of some importance. Altogether I think I was lucky. One of the mathematical masters coached me and I got, it all seemed rather indecent, an equivalent scholarship in mathematics at Cambridge. [00:04:05] So, off I went to Cambridge and then that perhaps was the most important period in my life because I was there for three years, and then spent another two years there and, one way and another, I have always been in touch with Cambridge because after I had taken my degree I got a fellowship. In fact I still am a Fellow at my college. One way and another I did meet a great many people who covered all kinds of things. Let's see. One man I knew fairly well was Rupert Brooke. I only mention him because he is well-known outside Cambridge. But a great many other men who ultimately attained considerable eminence. So you got a very wide acquaintance with a great many things. There my interest in the arts was intensified because of a whole group of people there who were interested in them and who could talk about them, were glad to talk about them. ROBERT BROWN: Who were some of them? W.G. CONSTABLE: Well, Brooke was one of them, after all, he was a poet. As for the others, I can hardly, scarcely remember. I could give you names but they have no particular meaning. One might have some meaning: D. W. Baud who became a Berlin correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. [00:06:04] That was before the war—Oakes, but there again that doesn't mean anything to anyone. P. N. F. Young, Let's see. He became a parson. Oh, he became a parson when he was at Cambridge. ROBERT BROWN: What were your chief interests while at university? W.G. CONSTABLE: I was mainly an economist. That's what I took my degree in an historian and economist with —but you were very much encouraged. You could always find people to talk about other things. So the arts always took an important part in my life, one way and another. Then the next thing to note is that I decided to go to the Bar and I moved to London and fixed myself up with another man in good lodgings in Hampstead, and very good lodgings they were. I hope everybody was as lucky as I was, comfortable and unpretentious. Of course Hampstead is a very agreeable part of London. For anything but what it's worth, I used to walk down. I went into chambers. That means I paid a member, Blake, in the bar, who got a handsome fee to be allowed to work in his chambers. He later became a judge. A very able man and his chambers were in Lincoln's Inn. I used to walk down to them every morning, four miles, and walk back every evening. [00:08:07] So I used to do eight miles a day, walking, which was very good exercise. But, in chambers there again I met—they were all young men who were going to the Bar, and there I really began a legal career. I won't go into it. You don't get at that stage in your existence any paid work, but I did have to go into court on occasion to do something, unpaid work, that needed to be done in cases that come into chambers. Sometimes you'd find that the head of the chambers was in the house of lords and somebody else in the Court of Appeals and there was nobody else who could handle the case and got experience that way. Altogether, things were going very well until the war broke out. ROBERT BROWN: You had mentioned in your article in Apollo magazine meeting some people in the art world even at this time in London— W.G. CONSTABLE: Oh yes, I did. ROBERT BROWN: And seeing collections, and I think you mentioned something of very low prices for certain French work? W.G. CONSTABLE: That is perfectly true. I used to go to the big auction rooms at Christie's and Sotheby's and, to a certain extent, to some of the bigger dealers. I made myself reasonably familiar, of course, I was not buying anything at the time but this was a matter of great interest to me and I got to know a certain number of people. Not well, but people like Roger Fry, for example, who was a great figure in the art world in London at that time, and similar people. [00:10:14] ROBERT BROWN: Could you describe Roger Fry as you knew him? W.G. CONSTABLE: Oh, yes, I knew him well, quite well. ROBERT BROWN: Could you describe him? W.G. CONSTABLE: Just how can I describe him? ROBERT BROWN: As you knew him then, when you first knew him. W.G. CONSTABLE: He was tall, dark, going grey, with curly hair, very intelligent face, hardly handsome but at the same time so intelligent and full of energy and interest in life. In fact, one of his—We were a whole range of people who were his friends in that circle, one of whom described him and said, "You know, Roger is so full of energy he makes you ill." And that was a rather good description of him. Everything with him was a matter of intensity and a very good man to know in that way. So that was my life, as a young man at the Bar. Then, of course, the war came and, like a lot of other people, I enlisted. And I am one of the few surviving people, I believe, of whom it was said, "I took the shilling." I enlisted in the famous regiment called "The Inns of Court Officer's Training Corps." It was best known as "The Devil's Own." It was restricted to lawyers. Hence the title "The Devil's Own." [00:12:00] [They laugh.] And as we went in to enlist—it was in Temple Gardens—a great, well-known cricketeer was helping. He had a big bag of shillings. He'd give you a shilling and I took the shilling and was straightaway enrolled in "The Inns of Court." Then I went to the camp with them. Well, the experiences in camp were the experiences, I think, of most people. When it was raining really hard, we were under canvas, but ultimately, they managed to get us into billets in a town called Buckminster. In due course, as it were, you were thought to be reasonably qualified.