Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject

Book by Secrest Meryle

Chapter One: The Glass Pavilion

Before I became a biographer I used to write interviews for the Washington Post and one day I was sent along to interview Kenneth Clark. The British art historian, who was also a celebrated lecturer, author, university professor, gallery director, patron, collector, social lion and courtier, was at the height of his fame as star of the television series Civilisation. A wide international audience had, as it were, fallen in love with him. Roses were practically being thrown at his feet and further accolades would follow his disarming, self-revelatory memoir, Another Part of the Wood.

I found him in Georgetown at the home of the founding director of the National Gallery of Art. David Finley was, by then, a small, shrunken and noncommittal figure who, I would belatedly discover, had locked away forever secrets of the art world acquired during a lifetime of firsthand observation. It was 1969. Clark entered the room as if he had stepped out of a picture frame, looking exactly right. He was in his sixties and still handsome, with even features, a beautifully shaped head and an expansive brow. The amiably goofy Bertie Wooster, hero of P. G. Wodehouse’s comedies, who employs the frighteningly erudite Jeeves, was wont to explain that his butler’s brainpower came from eating fish and the way his head stuck out at the back. As I recall, Kenneth Clark preferred lamb or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding to fish, and the only thing that ever stuck out at the back was his hair. For me, the essence of penetrating intelligence is exemplified by the forehead, and his was as serene and sweeping as any I had seen. I took particular note of what the British would call his keen gaze, so full of energy and expression, and the way he caressed one of his host’s delicate alabaster objets. There was something curiously familiar about him. But the fact that I had just viewed all thirteen episodes of Civilisation must explain why I seemed able to predict his movements, gestures and shades of expression.

Before Clark became a television performer and “national icon,” as David Cannadine called him, he had been Keeper of Fine Art at the Ashmolean, director of London’s National Gallery, Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, chairman of the Arts Council and Independent Television Authority, as well as the author of books on art and artists, including works on Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Piero della Francesca, and The Nude. He talked freely and fluently and, after I sent him the article, wrote to thank me. This seemed to call for a magazine piece. I persuaded Smithsonian magazine to let me interview him again, which wasn’t too difficult. The following summer I flew to England to visit the Clarks in their castle outside Hythe in Kent.

It was a Saturday morning, and Lord Clark met me at the station. Lady Clark—Jane—was having her hair done. We would pick her up and then go to Saltwood Castle for lunch. I had dressed for the occasion in my latest affectation, what James Laver would have called a Robin Hood outfit, complete with tunic and matching pants. My host met me in Scottish tweeds, a green velour hat and matching suede shoes. (Jeeves would have taken a very dim view of the shoes.) I could not have looked any more out of place if I had been carrying a bow and arrow, but Lord Clark, his manners as always faultless, rose above it.

There was a heavy summer rain, and as the wait might be prolonged we went for a quick one. Kenneth Clark pulled the Wolsey right up to the front steps of Folkestone’s largest hotel, but not before I had surreptitiously taken note of the ten-year-old car’s low mileage (6,000) and the two books inside the glove compartment: Charles Darwin and His World and The Odes of Pindar. “This is what my father used to call a beezer,” he said as we dashed inside. When he said a quick one, he meant it. He downed his whiskies rather the way Russians toss back vodka; now you see it, now you don’t. I had barely started on a martini when it was time to squelch back down the steps to the car with its dashing red interior. He had left the window open on his side. “Oh well,” he said, “I shall get a wet bottom,” and we drove off.

He was the second Kenneth Mackenzie Clark. The first was an immensely wealthy Scot, one of the Clarks of Paisley who made their fortunes in the manufacture of sewing thread, and his father had acquired more than £1 million when he sold his share of the business in 1896. That made him very rich indeed, with all sorts of fashionable addresses, but what always interested me was that he called himself “K.” My subject, therefore, always called himself “K,” and the complexities of that identification and its implications for his artistic and emotional heritage kept me awake at night in years to come. For the moment I was dazzled enough to be told, after addressing him as Lord Clark, “My friends always call me ‘K.’ ”

K and I drew up at Miss Dora Clifford’s hair salon, and Lady Clark edged into the back seat. I had seen pictures of her in her twenties, with a boyish cut, an embroidered stole flung negligently over one shoulder. It was a bit disappointing to find her wearing an entirely conventional tweed suit, her single fashion statement a pair of knit hose with a lacy pattern up the front that drew discreet attention to a shapely pair of legs. Her face seemed wider and softer. There was no trace of the piquant, almost pouting look of the early photographs. It was hard to imagine her as the bold, assertive Jane who had told her friends, in 1953, “We’ve taken a castle in Kent!” That, Diana Menuhin thought, begged for Beatrice Lillie’s retort, “Put it back at once!” Her husband led the conversation, which formed an abbreviated travelogue as we traversed Folkestone’s slick and deserted front. She spoke about the well-publicized breakup between Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, whom they knew well, with a tantalizing comment that she did not pursue. In fact, much of her conversation had an oddly disjointed quality, but I attributed that to her husband’s flow of confident comments.

It was a real castle, as romantic as anything imagined by Walter Scott. Considered one of the finest examples of a small Norman fortress in England, its turrets and battlements were picturesquely arranged around a partial moat, with an expanse of faultless green lawn on the opposite side and great masses of roses climbing over broken walls. One building that now housed Lord Clark’s library was the Archbishop’s audience hall where, legend had it, the four knights of Henry II had planned to murder Thomas à Becket. Saltwood even had a ghost story of sorts; several guests, including the actress Irene Worth, had heard voices in the yellow bedroom and the sound of bells at five in the morning. Kenneth Clark had heard them himself. My own response to a building of such splendor and antiquity was mixed. I had a confused impression of stone halls, stained-glass windows, arches, huge fireplaces, silk velvet upholstery, daisies in vases, oils, watercolors and drawings by Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and Cézanne. Yet there was something austere, if not forbidding, about the atmosphere that the use of inviting fabrics, flowers, down cushions, tapestries and Persian carpets could not dispel. Kenneth Clark said they were building a house on one floor because, he continued, with a gesture toward an ominously long flight of stone steps, Jane tended to “tumble about a bit.” It appeared she had fallen down this flight and broken an arm; I was surprised she had not killed herself. His description of the event seemed so offhand as to be jolting.

Lunch was almost ready, organized by K, who seemed in charge of everything. There was just about time for one of his terrifyingly abbreviated cocktail hours. I got another martini. Jane asked for the same, but was not given one. As we sat down to lunch, she remonstrated weakly, “K, you forgot my martini.” He was obviously pretending not to hear. We had lamb on Chinese porcelain, with mint sauce in a silver bowl. There were raspberries and cream for dessert; it was perfection. K opened an excellent white Bordeaux, and he and I polished it off between us. Jane Clark had, at most, half a glass. Then the most amazing thing happened. Like the Cheshire cat, she was vanishing before our eyes. Almost the only thing left was the smile as she, on silent feet, glided off to bed. I would learn that she was a famous drunk, said to have fallen down in more embassies than any other woman in England. She seemed almost grateful for the idea that K was going to show me around the castle grounds, and at her suggestion we made our way to the scullery, where I was fitted out with a pair of wellies. Some time after that we ended our tour in K’s study, on either side of a fireplace. In my muddy boots and principal boy pantomime outfit I hardly qualified as a femme fatale. So I was astounded to be pulled to my feet by K, who then wrapped me in his arms and said something outlandish like having loved me from the moment he saw me. I was quite grateful to be deposited, soon afterwards, on the train back to London—something like the 4:15.

In his youth, Kenneth Clark had been a runner, and when I got to know him he was still running. It would not be too much of an overstatement to say that he could shoot out of bed, take his morning tea, bathe, be dressed and ready for action in the time it took the rest of us to stagger to the front door for the morning paper. His opening gambit when he met you at the station on the 12:10 would be an enthusiastic description of a fast train back to London at 1:50 p.m. “He terrifies me when he is in this mood,” one of his girlfriends, Margaret Slythe, said. “He’s like a train shuntin...