Thomas Wright of Olney (the place where he was born and spent most of his life) will be better known to most readers of this essay for his Life of Edward FitzGerald, published in two bulky volumes by Grant Richards of London in 1904. He is less well known as the author of a book of Omar–related quatrains, Heart’s Desire, issued by Long’s Publications Ltd of London in 1925 (1). It contained 101 quatrains, presumably adopting this number in imitation of FitzGerald’s fourth edition, which Wright regarded as FitzGerald’s best. As we shall see, though he thought it might have been FitzGerald’s best as poetry, Wright believed that FitzGerald had rather misrepresented the ‘true’ Omar, and in Heart’s Desire he attempted to set the record straight, as it were.
Heart’s Desire was illustrated with ten drawings by Cecil Watts Paul Jones (hereafter Paul, as he was familiarly known), a name little known today, alas. He gets no mention in Alan Horne’s book The Dictionary of 20th Century British Book Illustrators (1995), for example, nor in Brigid Peppin and Lucy Micklethwait’s Book Illustrators of the Twentieth Century (1984) – hence this essay. According to one critic, his illustrations are “quite in the style of Aubrey Beardsley without that artist’s sinister sensualism,” though I am in two minds about the extent of this myself. Certainly some of his work can be classed as Symbolist, occasionally Surrealist, as we shall see.
As its Title–Page indicates (Fig.1a), Heart’s Desire is “principally a presentment from various translations of the quatrains of Omar Khayyam that relate to SAKI, the beautiful CUPBEARER.” That is, Wright opts for a beautiful girl wine–server, and not, as some would have it, a beautiful boy wine-server – for western heterosexual male illustrators (and readers) things are more interesting that way, after all, and judging by his illustrations, our artist certainly had an eye for the ladies, as indeed did Wright.
The “various translations” to which Wright alludes include John Payne’s book The Quatrains of Omar Kheyyam of Nishapour (1898), for Wright agreed with Payne (who was a friend of his (2)) that FitzGerald’s version was “a mere rifacimento of a few [of] Khayyam’s verses.” In his Preface to Heart’s Desire, Wright expressed his belief that in using so few quatrains from the number available, FitzGerald had given a misleading picture of Omar, depicting him as too much of an agnostic, too much of a pessimist, and too much of a wine–bibber. For example, he cited Justin Huntley McCarthy’s prose translation, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, first published in 1889, and Payne’s Quatrains, to show that Omar sometimes had “awe, wonder and respect” for God (Payne quatrain 394; McCarthy p.43 & 82) and that far from being a persistent tippler, Omar was also on record as saying “to wine and women I have bidden adieu” (Payne, quatrains 146, 502 & 541.) But in truth any verses expressing “awe, wonder and respect” for God are greatly outnumbered by others taking a sceptical stance, and the verses Wright cites from Payne about bidding adieu to wine and women are vastly outnumbered by others advocating just the opposite! (Indeed, the quote – from Payne quatrain 502 – is on account of Omar’s vanished youth, and age taking its toll!) In other words, Wright is arguably as guilty of biased selection as he accuses FitzGerald of being. In fact, in the Preface to his translations, FitzGerald said he had selected “a less than equal proportion of the ‘drink and make merry,’ which (genuine or not) recurs over–frequently in the Original.” If anything, then, FitzGerald played down Omar’s drinking, believing much of it to be a poetical stance. But more of this later, after we have seen some of Wright’s quatrains. Wright did freely admit, in his Preface to Heart’s Desire, that he had taken at least as many liberties with Khayyam’s original as had FitzGerald before him, but he hoped that his version would stand on its own merits, as had FitzGerald’s. Readers must decide for themselves whether it did or it didn’t.
In his posthumously published Autobiography (3), Wright explained the drift of Heart’s Desire thus (p.198):
I make Khayyam, as Khayyam himself does, “a woman’s property” almost to the end, and then let him break away, as in the original; for he says plainly in one quatrain, “To wine and to woman I’ve bidden adieu.” When free, he bursts out with:
Ah now on my soul comes the rhythmical rush, I ride on the whirlwind, and Caucasus crush, Oh who could my joy and elation believe!Or who my ecstatical phrensy conceive!
Heart’s Desire is divided into eight sections following the above plan, bearing largely self–explanatory titles: (1) The Book of Love (quatrains 1 to 26); (2) The Book of Joy (quatrains 27 to 49); (3) The Book of Jealousy (quatrains 50 to 59); (4) The Book of the Awakening (quatrains 60 to 75); (5) The Book of Regret (quatrains76 to 89; (6) The Book of Pain (quatrains 90 to 93); (7) The Book of the Relapse (quatrains 94 to 96); and (8) The Book of Victory (quatrains 97 to 101.) The above–quoted quatrain is quatrain 99, & clearly belongs to The Book of Victory section! It is noteworthy that the Victory section contains only five quatrains, which can perhaps be taken as a measure of the struggle Wright had to rescue Omar from what he regarded as FitzGerald’s misleading picture of him. Others, however, may interpret the figures as showing that though for most of his days Omar led a somewhat dissolute and irreverent life, he did come to his senses in the end.
In what follows, the quoted quatrain numbers can be used to associate particular quatrains with their respective sections.
Paul did the frontispiece (Fig.1b) and nine other illustrations for Heart’s Desire. Six of them are shown here as Figs.1c, 1d, 1e, 1f, 1g, & 1h. [The illustrations can be browsed here.]
Fig.1b illustrates quatrain 12, spoken by Omar, which reads:
The chess–board’s between us, and now ’tis your turn, From you the shrewd sirens of China might learn.One touch and I’m robbed of my Elephant, Knight And Queen. Oh, my purse! Oh my pitiful plight!
Wright adds footnotes to this: the shrewd sirens of China might learn from the Saki how to use their feminine wiles so as to distract their opponents in a chess game; the Elephant is our Rook or Castle; and the reference to Omar’s purse indicates that they are playing for money. Paul has skilfully depicted the Saki as ‘in charge.’ Note also the picture of naked women bathing, above and behind the couple, in contrast to the unfolding scroll held almost carelessly in Omar’s left hand: Woman versus Scholarship ?
Fig.1c illustrates quatrain 47, spoken by Omar, which reads:
The flagon which now in my right hand you see, Was once a lorn languishing lover like me, And the handle that's holding it fondled a few Years ago the fair neck of a loveling like you.
This quatrain is clearly of the potter’s shop type. Note the pictures behind the couple, seemingly related to Omarian themes of Life and Death. Fig.1c rather reminds of a later illustration done by Gordon Ross for his Rubaiyat of 1941.
Fig.1d illustrates quatrain 57, again spoken by Omar, which reads:
In a sweet little house resides Love – you know where – In a wood – in the tangles, I mean, of your hair; And two pretty pools are that little house near – Your eyes – which he looks in, to see himself, dear.
The “he” in the last line is Omar’s rival in love. Note the Cupid–like figure, with the bewitching eyes of the Saki (“two pretty pools”) in the background, the Cupid’s bow doubling up as the mouth of the Saki. (This brings to mind Dali’s “Face of Mae West”, though this was done in c.1934, some years after Fig.1d.) Note too that the Saki’s hair is neatly braided on the right (attraction, temptation ?) but a tangle of thorns on the left (entrapment?)
Fig.1e illustrates quatrain 66, spoken by the Saki, which reads:
Ah! gird at the goblet! At woman make game! But surely ’twere fairer your weakness to blame, Though I play, though I sing, though I dance, what’s amiss! For you needn’t look at me – let alone kiss.
Note the overturned goblet and broken wine pitcher shown to the lower left. “Gird” is a medieval English word for jeer.
Fig.1f illustrates quatrain 81, spoken by Omar, which reads:
Ah, love is an evil, an ailment malign, To foster it artist and poet combine; But I, were I caliph, would darken the sky With gallows trees hung with them eighty feet high.
This is surely the strangest of quatrains, with the strangest of Rubaiyat illustrations, with five executed artists and poets hung high above the despairing Omar & his rejected Saki to the lower right. I know of no other edition of The Rubaiyat which features such a verse, and consequently no illustration by any artist comparable to this one.
Fig.1g illustrates quatrain 90, which reads:
You sigh, and that you are unhappy assert, Are you ill ? What’s the matter ? And where does it hurt ? From pain I am free and no physic I need. Then what’s all this fuss ? You confuse me indeed!
Wright annotates this verse indicating that lines 1, 2 & 4 are spoken by the Saki, and line 3 by Omar. Note the Saki’s symbolic ‘halo’ of thorns.
Fig.1h illustrates quatrain 101, the final quatrain, spoken by Omar, which reads:
So hinder me not with your “How’s” and your “Why’s,” With your pouts, and your mows, and your quips, and your sighs; I see you not, hear you not – yonder’s my goal, And I – I am captain, at last, of my soul!
The illustration needs no further explanation: Omar is finally released from the clutches of women and wine. As Joe Howard has pointed out, “I am the captain of my soul” was the last line of W.E. Henley’s poem “Invictus”, first published without a title in 1888, and given the title “Invictus” when it was published in The Oxford Book of English Verse in 1900. Whether Wright’s usage owes anything to Henley is not clear, though.
As regards these illustrations generally, they tend to adhere fairly closely to Wright’s text, with occasional dash of ‘colour’ like the mouth & hair in Fig.1d and the thorns in Fig.1g. [The illustrations can be browsed here.]
As regards Wright’s text, my own immediate reactions to it are that the text is as much a play involving two characters, Omar and the Saki, as a poem. But mostly I am left astonished by Wright’s depiction of Omar as turning aside from wine, and rejecting the love of his Saki (a fusion of his wine–server and his Beloved ?), to the point of hanging those artists and poets who worship love – it is so very far removed from FitzGerald’s depiction of Omar as a wine–loving agnostic who finds “paradise enow” beneath the bough with his Beloved. That FitzGerald and Wright could construct two such different Omars is, as indicated earlier, easily explained by the way in which they selected their quatrains, the waters being muddied by the fact that many of the quatrains which now bear Omar’s name were actually penned by later imitators who had their own agenda in penning them. (The most notable are those which attempt to depict Omar as a closet Sufi, whose wine drinking is purely symbolic.) Plus the translator or versifier in his (very occasionally her) choice of words can add their own slant on the ‘true’ Omar. The spectrum goes from the Sufi translation of J.B. Nicolas (4a) to the debauched frequenter of low–life taverns envisaged by Juan Cole (4b). But one can get some guidance here by looking at the Bodleian / Ouseley manuscript, one of FitzGerald’s sources, and the oldest known manuscript of The Rubaiyat. It dates from AD 1460–1, some 330 years after Omar’s death, and consists of 158 quatrains. It is likely, therefore, to have comparatively less later additions by other hands amongst its text (4c) than Payne’s collection of 845 quatrains and McCarthy’s of 466. Analysing these 158, some 66 are of the drink & make merry type, 29 are of the agnostic type (with none at all expressing “awe, wonder and respect” for God) and 18 are in favour of female company (generally along with the wine, of course.) Only a single quatrain expresses any regret of love & wine – quatrain 61 which, in Heron–Allen’s translation of 1898 (4d), reads:
Being old, my love for thee led my head into a snare; If not, how comes it that my hand holds the cup of date–wine ? My sweetheart has destroyed the penitence born of reason, And the passing seasons have torn the garment that patience sewed.
The “thee” in line 1 is presumably the Saki or wine–server, and this verse is clearly a relative of FitzGerald’s quatrain 94 in his fourth version (quatrain 70 in his first):
Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before I swore – but was I sober when I swore ? And then and then came Spring, and Rose–in–hand My thread–bare Penitence apieces tore
In other words, Heron–Allen’s quatrain 61 is not a case of Omar bidding adieu to wine, but an admission that he can't give it up – nor his love for the wine–server, come to that. Still less is there any indication that Omar has an urge to hang all artists & poets who foster Love.
Using the above as a guide, then, I would suggest that FitzGerald probably got closer to the ‘real’ Omar than Wright, though I know that some will inevitably disagree with this.
Finally, the quality of Wright’s verse is way below that of FitzGerald: it just doesn’t have anything like the appeal of FitzGerald’s “Epicurean Eclogue in a Persian Garden.” As a reviewer in The Scotsman (8 June, 1925, p.2) put it:
But however interesting Mr Wright’s work may be as a sort of appendix to FitzGerald’s, it cannot stand comparison with the English “Rubaiyat” as a work of art. Mr Wright has used a tripping metre, which sometimes stumbles, and which achieves at times – and this, of course, may not be Mr Wright’s fault – the status of doggerel. Omar at his best was perhaps not a great poet, but certainly he appears at times as an indifferent versifier in Mr Wright’s volume.
I do have to say, though, that I still admire Wright’s industry, for to construct Heart’s Desire he must have gone through Payne and McCarthy’s translations in great detail.
Heart’s Desire was one of a trilogy. It was followed by two companion volumes, Rose–in–Hood (1925) and Green Beryl (1927). Both of these were privately published by Wright at the Cowper School, Olney, by then no longer a school, but his private & business address. Both were illustrated by Paul, both containing ten illustrations, including the frontispiece. (The former contained an extra illustration, a copy of a Persian original in the British Museum, this too by Paul - see below (Fig.15b).) By way of explanation, the former does for Hafiz what Heart’s Desire does for Omar Khayyam, Rose–in–Hood (= Rosebud) being the Beloved of Hafiz, and the latter does likewise for Sadi, Green Beryl (= Emerald) being his Wife. Like Heart’s Desire both contain 101 stanzas divided into 8 sections.
Five illustrations from Rose–in–Hood are given here as Figs.2a, 2b, 2c, 2d & 2e, and five from Green Beryl as Figs.3a, 3b, 3c, 3d & 3e. I have deliberately chosen here the more interesting ones. [The illustrations can be browsed here.]
The captions of the illustrations from Rose–in–Hood make them reasonably self–explanatory, though one wonders about the reason for Rose’s mirror hiding half of Hafiz’s face in Fig.2a, since there is no mirror in stanza 20. The sea–pearls of the mer–folk in Fig.2b parallel the ‘pearls’ of Hafiz’s verses, his verses being so famous they are known even to the mer–folk. The caption of Fig.2c is only the first couplet of stanza 39, the second couplet reading, “Diogenes in it his bald head abases, / So round it we’ll sidle with sanctified faces.” According to Wright, Diogenes is here a symbol of Wine as “Wisdom in a cask”, the sidling round the cask being an irreverent dig at the pilgrims circling round the Kaaba at Mecca. Fig.2d is largely explained by its caption, and Paul has neatly depicted both sowing and reaping by having the principal figure sowing with his right hand and reaping with his left. Note that he stands on a Yin–Yang symbol, here representing the cyclic and complementary nature of sowing and reaping. The caption of Fig.2e, “The Flight of the Ideal,” signifies, according to Wright, that the Thinker will ever pursue an ideal, but never catch up with it. Paul, though, translates this into the pursuit of ideal feminine beauty, using jasmine and bindweed as symbols of pursuit (of beauty) and capture (by the beauty pursued.) The face, breasts and pubic area of the central figure are defined by floral forms (compare the mouth of the figure in Fig.1d.) [Browse here.]
The illustrations to Green Beryl require a little more explanation. Fig.3a effectively shows Sadi killing a Brahmin for insulting Allah by promoting the worship of a gold idol on an ebony throne (stanza 23). According to a note by the artist on p.32, “The rent in the hanging representing Brahma shows the crescent moon representing Mohammedanism.” Fig.3b depicts Sadi enamoured of a fortune teller. In the background, the white figure pours out stars (presumably symbolic of Sadi’s verses, like the ‘pearls’ of Hafiz), the black figure, wine. Fig.3c shows the dead son of Sadi telling his living father that “the dead are not dead.” Another note by the artist on p.32 tells us that: “the symbolic composition of this picture consists of a dynamic pale triangle typifying hope and faith triumphing over a dark static triangle representing despair – the one occupied by the boy, the other by Sadi.” Fig.3d shows a thin Sadi kneeling before a pious and overweight noble and saying, “I don’t want a blessing, I do want a dinner.” Finally, Fig.3e, the frontispiece, relates to the story of a young man who falls in love with a princess and wants to marry her. The king tells him if he leaps from a tower and lives, he can marry his daughter. He leaps, but dies, at which point Sadi tells the king that the dead boy at least deserves a kiss from the princess. The kiss given, the boy revives, a miracle is proclaimed, and the boy and the princess duly marry. Another note by the artist on p.32 tells us that, “This illustrates all the incidents in connection with the Miracle after the mediaeval and oriental fashion of presenting all the occurrences of a narrative in the same picture, and the important persons larger than the others.” [Browse here.]
Paul’s illustrations are of variable quality, it is true, but they are imaginative and I have a great fondness for them. As readers will no doubt have noticed by now, he regularly signs his illustrations simply PAUL JONES. So, who was he ?
Little appears to be in print about Paul, but fortunately, his distinctive name enables us to eke out a few details of his life from online ancestry records, plus much information about him was incidentally recorded by his close friend, photographer Angus McBean (1904–1990), whose name will crop up many times in what follows. In addition, I was fortunate enough to make contact with Richard Paul–Jones, Paul’s son.
Cecil Watts Paul Jones was born in London on 24 April 1904, the only child of Walter Paul Jones, a physician and surgeon and his wife, Georgiana Frances (née Watts, hence the Paul’s second name). Sadly, his mother took a lover, but despite her husband’s attempts at reconciliation, the marriage did not recover and the two were divorced in 1908 (5). In the census return for 1911 his father is listed as “single – divorced.” At the time of the 1911 census father and son were living at 1 Walton Place, Knightsbridge, London, with a nursery governess (Beatrice Mary Morgan), a cook and a housemaid in residence. (The inscription visible in Fig.1a is clearly to the artist’s father.)
In 1918 Walter Paul Jones married Beatrice Mary Morgan, his son’s nursery governess. At the time of the 1921 census, Paul, his father and his new step–mother were all together at the same Walton Place address with two servants, seemingly sisters. Aged 17, he is listed as still in full time education, this being at the prestigious St. Paul’s School. But Paul was not overly academic, and was more inclined towards the arts. It appears, though, that his father disapproved of his ambition to become an artist and wanted him to go to medical school in Vienna. He went to Vienna alright, but he enrolled in an art school instead, which resulted in his father cutting his allowance to subsistence level (6a). This must have been in the early 1920s, for by 1925 he was back in England, having illustrated Heart’s Desire, and in the following year he had joined the Kibbo Kift movement in London, in which he was to be active until 1934. But more on that later.
In 1936, Cecil W.P. Jones married Esther Grant at Hammersmith, London. She was a former debutante and trained dancer who was the closest female friend of Angus McBean (6b), another Kibbo Kift member. A year or so earlier she had reluctantly turned up to model nude for a mural which Angus had asked Paul to do for him, and this marked the start of their romance (6c). Their marriage was frowned upon by her parents – her father was a baronet, and Paul was a mere impoverished artist, after all (6d). Presumably because of this, the marriage was conducted in secret, but truth will out, as the saying goes, and their secret was revealed in The Daily Mirror on 3 November 1936 (p.3) (Fig.4)
By 1937 he had officially hyphenated his name to Cecil Watts Paul–Jones, for his name is rendered thus in the electoral rolls for both 1937 and 1938. As he put it in a later document preserved in the family archives, “I joined my baptismal name Paul to my surname with a hyphen in order to retain in my branch of the family the surnames of both my paternal grandparents” (these being William Harry Jones and Charlotte Paul.) During this period he and his wife, Esther Paul–Jones, were living at 19 St. Peter’s Square, Hammersmith. In 1937 they had a son, Mark Paul–Jones, who, having been born prematurely, died that same year. In 1938 they had a healthy daughter, Julia Paul–Jones. (Years later she was to graduate from drama school, having her diploma photograph taken by the then celebrated photographer to the stars, Angus McBean. Subsequently she married the actor Nigel Keen (6e).)
In the 1939 Register Paul was listed as “Scenic and Decorative Artist (own means)”, though exactly what that entailed is not clear. Certainly he had illustrated six books for Thomas Wright between 1925 and 1933, Heart’s Desire being the first; he had also, as we have seen, worked on a mural for Angus McBean, with whom he worked on various other occasions (6f), and, as we shall see presently, he had done some decorative art work for the Kibbo Kift, and possibly some work for advertising agencies. His interest in the theatre (he had in fact done some acting) may also have led to some stage–set designs through his association with Angus. Be all that as it may, having separated from Esther (6g), in the 1939 Register he is recorded as living in Totnes, Devon, with Rowena Bernice Chubb. He spent the war years working in a factory in Weston–Super–Mare, assembling Beaufighter aircraft, and travelling back to Totnes to see Rowena as often as possible. Woodhouse (6h) says this war work was because Paul was a conscientious objector. But this seems to have been based on the possibly unreliable personal belief of some family members, and other family members believe he was directed to factory work for medical reasons. At the time of writing there is no documentary evidence for either belief.
Subsequently Paul and Esther were divorced, and in 1942 he married Rowena at Wincanton, Somerset, and in 1944 Esther married Francis Ernest Appleyard Kitto in London. In fact, Chubb was Rowena’s married name – she had previously married a David S. Chubb in 1932, and had a daughter Carol by him, born in that same year. Rowena’s maiden name was McBean, and she was the younger sister of Angus McBean, who had apparently taken rather a shine to her brother’s friend whilst she was still a teenager (6i).
Sadly, having suffered from the disease for some time, Rowena died of TB in 1945 aged only 35, which naturally devastated both Angus and Paul (6j). Matters were further complicated by the fact that Paul had intended to adopt Rowena’s daughter, Carol, as his own, but her biological father opposed it (6k). Be that as it may, she regarded herself as Paul’s step–daughter and when she married Douglas Trevor Diss in 1978, The Lincolnshire Free Press (5 September 1978) named the bride as Carol Paul–Jones “only daughter of Mr and the late Mrs Cecil Watts Paul–Jones of London.”
In 1947 he married Audrey Barbara Greenall, who had unilaterally decided that she wanted to be called “Nikki” from a very early age because she knew tawdry to be derived from the cheap lace goods sold at the annual St. Audrey’s Fair in Ely, an association she found distressing. She was an assistant of Rowena’s brother, Angus. She was much younger than Paul, but was attracted to him and was intrigued by some of the art–work he was doing for Angus. The attraction was mutual, much to the annoyance of the homosexual Angus. He had always been attracted by Paul himself, though with no reciprocation, our artist being so firmly heterosexual. Audrey lost her job as a result, and Angus refused to attend their wedding, though relationships did improve over the years (6l). A wedding photograph is shown in Fig.5a – the bride and groom are centre stage, of course, the lady on Paul’s right being Audrey’s mother, Meg. In the electoral rolls for 1955 Paul was living with his new wife, now Audrey B. Paul–Jones, with Walter P. Jones (his father) and with Margaret E. Greenall (Audrey’s mother, Meg) at ‘Westwood’, 2 Talbot Road, Carshalton, Surrey. It would have been about this time that Paul became involved with the Carshalton Players – Fig.5b shows him painting one of their stage sets. In 1949 Paul and his wife Audrey were expecting twins, but sadly they did not survive. Later they had two children, Miranda B. Paul–Jones, born in 1950, and Richard A. Paul–Jones, born in 1951. A family photo taken in about 1955 is shown in Fig.5c, with, left to right, daughter Miranda, Audrey’s mother Meg, son Richard, Audrey, Paul, and at the far right, Paul’s father, Walter, who died in 1957. Audrey’s mother Meg died in 1977. Unfortunately, this marriage didn’t last either, and in 1964 Paul and Audrey divorced, and she married John S. Archer.
The thrice married Paul died in Frome, Somerset, on 30 May 1980, aged 76, his death certificate recording his profession as “Artist and Gentleman.” His ashes are interred in Bath Crematorium, Fig.5d showing them under a “twiggery”, an ephemeral construction made on the occasion his centenary in 2004. Audrey died in 2016 at the ripe old age of 94, having changed her name by deed poll to Nikki when she was about 80. His first wife, Esther, died in 1988, aged 72.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
And now for something completely different....
Another source of useful information about Paul comes from the archives of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, a strange organisation of which Paul was an active member. This was founded in 1920 by artist and writer John Hargrave (1894–1982) and various associates, its name “Kibbo Kift” apparently meaning “Proof of Great Strength” in old Cheshire – some say Kentish – dialect (7a). (As we shall see, Hargrave had a fondness for adopting obscure archaic words.) It was a confraternity of men, women, boys and girls, of every age, class, race and creed, its main features of membership being the love of woodcraft, camping, hiking, handicrafts and the search for world peace. Lest searching for world peace seems an odd thing to tag on to what in other respects was an equivalent of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides, it is worth noting that Hargrave had been involved with the Boy Scout movement, but had become disillusioned with its militaristic tendencies in the aftermath of the First World War, his outspoken views resulting in his expulsion from the movement. He thought of vigorous outdoor exercise as having a spiritual dimension, and he integrated with this the use of ritual, art, symbol and mythical imagery – ancient Egyptian, Red Indian, Anglo-Saxon and Norse – it was all grist for the mill. The idea behind it, of course, was that the membership would develop into a core of spiritually & physically healthy and creative individuals which would eventually expand and evolve into a whole society without such evils as poverty, injustice and war. Its principal emblem is shown in Fig.6, shown here in grayscale as colour schemes vary widely. The circular outline represents Unity or the Eternal; the K is the initial of Kindred; the flame arising from a camp fire signifies the Fire of Life or the Spirit; and the tree symbolises the Tree of Knowledge or the World Tree, take your pick. But stranger things are to come.
Paul joined Kibbo Kift in 1926, and in 1927 he served as the “Gleemaster” of their second “Wandlething Wapenshaw”, that is, the Master of Ceremonies of their second Spring Exhibition (Wapenshaw) in South East London (Wandlething) (7b). A photograph of him in that role, perhaps taken in that year or a year or so later, is shown in Fig.7a, and another photograph of him, but without the bizarre outfit, taken in about 1928–9, in Fig.7b (both taken by Angus McBean.) To add to the fun, members each had a KK nickname – Paul was “Old Mole”, John Hargrave was “White Fox”, Hargrave’s wife Ruth was “Minobi”, and the KK official photographer, Angus McBean was “Aengus Og”. (Paul’s KK name comes from Hamlet 1.5.162, incidentally – he was a great fan of Shakespeare.) The ‘everyday’ habit of the KK men was a Saxon hood, jerkin, shorts and sometimes a cloak – Fig.7c shows some of the kindred out on a hike in 1931. Women had other similarly dull attire, a skirt replacing the shorts and a sort of leather helmet replacing the hood (one can be seen on the right in Fig.7c), though their ceremonial dress was more adventurous – Fig.7d, for example, taken in c.1924, the young lady being Ruth Hargrave. Note the head of the Egyptian god Anubis decorating the canvas of the tent behind her; the cave man to the lower left (of whom more below); and the inscription at the base of the tent, said to be a quotation from Aleister Crowley, whose occult rituals seem to have intrigued Hargrave, all this forming a heady symbolic mix with the Red Indian ceremonial dress!
In between camping and hiking, they would travel to towns and villages promoting their beliefs through mummers’ plays, and both Paul and Angus McBean were keen members of the Cynstoke Mummers, shown in action in Fig.7e performing John Hargrave’s play Grim’s Frolic in 1928: Paul is the King, second from the left; Angus McBean is at the far right (7c). There were also performances by Sib and Gee, the KK Clowns, and also KK puppet shows. Nor must we forget the ceremony of the Touching of the Totems, here pictured at the KK’s annual Althing festival in 1925 (Fig.7f) – a sort of AGM, in other words. Oh yes, and there were also Scaldic Saga Contests (the winners of which were awarded a miniature KK totem pole), demonstrations of Folk Dancing, Kin sing–songs, and Archery Contests. And for visitors and Kin alike, there was also a gift shop at which Kin works of art and craft could be purchased.
The KK were fond of day trips, which became not merely days out, but pilgrimages. In 1924, some members made a pilgrimage to Piltdown in Sussex, to pay homage to their supposed great ancestor, Piltdown Man (then known as Dawn Man, but not then known to be a hoax), at the place where his remains had supposedly been discovered in 1912. There they performed a ritual fire ceremony with much chanting and singing of psalms, this involving a plaster cast of the reconstructed skull, though to what effect is not clear (7d). (This cast of the skull can be seen atop a totem pole at the centre of Fig.7f (8a). Note too the image of Piltdown Man on the tent canvas to the lower left of Fig.7d. ) Later, in 1929, some members made a pilgrimage to Silbury Hill and Old Sarum in Wiltshire, carrying with them banners designed by Hargrave to honour the Spirit of each place. We know from a KK Broadsheet that Paul was actually one of the banner–bearers on that particular pilgrimage, and fortunately a photograph of him in action has survived (Fig.7g) – the banner shows the ground plan of Old Sarum (8b). It will come as no surprise that on other occasions the KK also ‘did’ Stonehenge and Glastonbury (7e).
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
It all rather takes on the flavour of an all singing, all (Morris) dancing foretaste of 1960s hippiedom, with reverence for ancient holy places like Glastonbury, complete with rather naïve political ambitions to save the world, and it comes as no surprise that the world–at–large generally regarded the Kibbo Kift as a bunch of harmless crackpots. Some would argue, though, that this is overly dismissive, that the Gleemaster’s uniform (Fig.7a) was no more ridiculous than a High Court Judge in full regalia, and that the ceremony of the Touching of the Totems (Fig.7f) was no more ridiculous than the State Opening of Parliament – both emblematic of a world which, in the KK’s view, had gone badly wrong and needed overhauling. The First World War, with its massive loss of life, was still in the recent past, remember, and World Peace was one of the KK’s main aims, as was the solution of the economic hardship suffered by so many in the wake of the war. Having said that, all the dressing up was an odd way to protest if one wished to be taken at all seriously, and there was clearly a rather theatrical element to it all which might actually have detracted from the impact of the protest on the public at large, and, of course, on the powers that be. Indeed, at times the doings of the KK strike me as rather like a post–Dadaist play, somewhat akin to the bizarre Ubu plays of Alfred Jarry, and that, of course, may have been the appeal for some. The appeal for Paul, who was only 22 when he joined the KK, was probably primarily its anti–establishment stance, particularly common amongst the young in the post Great War era, but also I imagine the artistic theatricality of it all probably appealed to him as well. As we shall see, Paul (and Angus) became disillusioned and left the KK when it turned into what seemed too much like a militaristic political party.
There is no doubt that the talented and charismatic, if eccentric, Hargrave was the leading – some would say controlling – force of the KK, but in due course, like all other such groups, it began to split into factions as Hargrave was seen to be too autocratic (he banned the use of the gramophone at KK events, for example) and becoming too politically involved with the Theory of Social Credit, basically a drive to even out the inequalities of capitalism by balancing up the costs of production (wages) with the cost of goods produced (prices) by State administered Social Credit. By 1932 the Anglo–Saxon outfits of Kibbo Kift had turned into the militaristic–style outfits of the Green Shirts, though they were certainly not a paramilitary organisation, being dedicated to world peace. Paul appears to have followed Hargrave along this path to some extent, for he designed the graphic shown in Fig.8a which shows the repeated image of a Green Shirt carrying the banner of the KK (its logo by now was a K and its mirror image back to back.) The precise date of this design is not known. It seems to date from sometime between 1932 and 1934, the latter year being that in which the by–now somewhat disillusioned Paul left the KK, though he appears to have ‘kept in touch’ (7f). (The similarly disillusioned Angus McBean had left in 1931.) It must have been about the same time that Paul (probably) designed the Christmas card shown in Fig.8b (8c), for it bears the same KK logo as Fig.8a. It seems to depict a KK member blessing an impoverished woman with his downward pointing left hand, and pointing heavenwards with his right (the KK was notably sexist, it has to be said.) That is, help is at hand via the KK. He also drew the flow chart shown in Fig.8c, devised by Social Credit Party Member Frank Griffith, illustrating the workings of purchasing power before (yellow) and after (green) the proposed introduction of Social Credit. The chart dates from 1935. [Browse here.]
We need not follow the history of the Green Shirts, and the Social Credit Party which they became, any further than this, save to say that, despite their pacifism, there were inevitably some physical confrontations with the likes of Oswald Moseley’s Black Shirts. But it is interesting to look back of some of Paul’s contributions to the KK not already mentioned.
We know that at the KK’s handicraft display held at the “Watlingthing’s second Wapenshaw” (translation: their second exhibition in North London) in 1926, one exhibit was a waterproof cape with a hood, designed and made by Paul (7g). Around that time he was also the editor of Wandelog, the KK’s cultural newsletter (7h), though how long he remained in that post is not clear.
One of the favourite locations for the KK’s touring Cynstoke Mummers’ summer shows was Abinger Hammer in Surrey, where there was a lovely traditional English tea-shop, much frequented by the mummers. During the visit of 1929 Paul and Angus presented the owner with a carved and painted sign–board for her tea–room, she having changed its name to “Grim’s Kitchen” in honour of their performance of Hargrave’s play, Grim’s Frolic, mentioned earlier (7i). In fact, over the years Paul and Angus shared many projects, from interior decoration to stage–set design (6m), not to mention a venture into surrealist photography, of which more below.
Despite his anti–capitalist ideals, Hargrave had continued to work as freelance artist for various advertising agencies throughout 1920s the 1930s (7j). (In fact, most of the KK membership had daytime jobs too – idealism rarely pays the bills, after all, and needs must.) On at least one occasion, in 1934, Hargrave enlisted Paul’s help. This was in connection with designs for advertisements for Craven A cigarettes (7k), though unfortunately no information about which particular adverts is available, and many such were produced. It is quite possible that Paul got other advertising agency work through Hargrave, but again no precise information is available.
As we have seen, Paul illustrated Wright’s books Heart’s Desire (1925), Rose–in–Hood (1925) and Green Beryl (1927). To these three we should add Wright’s edition of The Autobiography of John Payne (1926), which had as its Appendix 2 some of Payne’s poems. Paul did ten illustrations for these, five of which are shown here as Figs.9a, 9b, 9c, 9d & 9e. [Browse here.]
Fig.9a is the frontispiece and illustrates the poem “Scorn and Sympathy”, the subtitle to which reads, “Schopenhauer’s formula for the philosopher’s attitude towards mankind.” The central figure wearing a crown of thorns (?), has his back to the observer, his right hand pointing towards the ideal of morality, symbolised by a priest holding a cross, and his left hand giving the thumbs–down to the darker side of a war–mongering humanity. Note the Yin–Yang symbol above, representing the two sides of human nature (compare Fig.2d.) In contrast to the highly symbolic “Scorn and Sympathy”, Fig.9b is a literal depiction of Melisande in her barge, “the loveliest lady whom ever upon / the sunbeams burned and the moonlight shone.” We are back to symbolism in Fig.9c, which illustrates the poem “Life’s Motive Force”, this being the power of Imagination “that stirs the sense to dare the heavenward flight,” the flight of the imagination being represented by the bow and arrow. Curiously the arrow is a naked man and the bow is constructed from two naked women, the implications of which I leave readers to decide for themselves, lest I stray into sexist waters! There is more heady symbolism in Fig.9d, illustrating the poem “Drunk or Sober,” apparently based on a text of Hafiz, for which Paul has provided this helpful footnote to his drawing: “The man ‘Drunken with the Wine of the Ideal’ has a clear passage pierced for him through the clouds which hide from the prosaic and perverted those Ultimate Mysteries and Realities which are typified by the balance of the Sun and Moon.” The two figures to the lower right are puzzling but presumably represent ‘sober’ earth–bound figures – one is clearly an astronomer (the prosaic ?), the other, perhaps, a dandified poet (the perverted ?) Finally, Fig.9e symbolically illustrates the poem “The Soul’s Ventures.” These are Ambition, Desire, Love, Hope, Endeavour, Fancy and Faith, these being represented as a fleet of ships, most of which either perish or stagger home again, “scourged by the scornful gales” – hence the despair of the figure beneath the map. [Browse here.]
Next, Wright’s book of his own poems, The Land of Souls (1927) was also illustrated by Paul. Its Frontispiece and Title–Page are shown in Fig.10a. “The Land of Souls” is the first poem in the book, the Land being the human mind which, as the last line of the poem informs us, is situated “behind your brow and mine.” Fig.10b is Paul’s explanation of the Frontispiece. This is the second map–illustration we have seen, the other being Fig.9e, and it is interesting that the KK set a great store by constructing maps charting cultural development over the centuries as a possible guide to future progress (7l), this involving the study of Alfred Watkins’ controversial book The Old Straight Track (1925) and Joyce Reason’s study of the place–names involved (8d).
In several ways this is a curious production. Readers will note from the Title–Page that some of the poems “owe their origin to the bewitchery of that QUEEN OF THE EAST – Southend–on–Sea”, the glories of which Wright and his wife had discovered in August 1926. The longest poem in the book, “Naziad – an Idyll of Southend–on–Sea”, was inspired by seeing the statuette of a Nereid (Fig.10c). Actually, the poem was only written after a visit to Southend–on–Sea, and its theme is a visitation by a real Nereid after seeing the statue. She represents, as Wright explains in his introductory remarks to the poem, the narrator’s “Super–self, Super–Psyche or Inspiration, and she represents the state of exaltation which is experienced at times by all real men of letters and artists.” Illustrating the same poem, Fig.10d shows the silhouetted poet calling for inspiration from his giant nude Muse, but getting none, and Fig.10e represents what it says in the caption, but done in a curiously surrealistic style, inviting the additional caption “Picasso meets da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.” [Browse here.]
Also worth mentioning is that four poems in the book relate to local crafts – two (“The Bobbin” and “The Pot of Lavender”) to Lace–making and two (“Leather and Thread and Tears” and “The Cobbler and the Likely Bor, or Apollo in Norfolk”) to Shoe–making. Wright had actually written books on these local crafts, The Romance of the Lace Pillow (H.H. Armstrong, Olney, 1919) and The Romance of the Shoe (Farncombe & Sons, London, 1922).
Wright also had an interest in local folk–lore and dialects, and wrote a series of ballads which incorporated both. These eventually appeared in book form under the title of Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire Ballads (Self–published, Olney, 1925.)
In 1932 a Miss Doris Hughes of Huntingdon visited Olney and presented Wright with a copy of a poem she had written, “The Cowper Museum at Olney.” This was a canny move, as Wright himself had founded the Cowper Museum in 1900. Wright requested to see more of her work and he liked what he saw. At his suggestion her book, The Sea Princess and other Poems, illustrated by Paul, was published by The Cowper Press, Olney, in 1933. One of Paul’s three illustrations to the title–poem is shown here as Fig.11a, and illustrates the lines:
In my halls by day and night Tritons pluck the golden strings Of their harps for my delight; And the serving sea–maid sings.
Fig.11b illustrates the poem “Song of the Ancient Spirits”, the ancient sprits being effectively the Phenomena of Nature: they are “the Flingers of Silver Rain”, the treaders of the rainbow who make the sigh of the summer trees and the fury of the tempest. Paul’s illustration shows a downpouring of rain supervised by a number of the Ancient Spirits, mostly, it seems, young and naked female ones. The figure to the lower left is presumably a Tree Spirit being invigorated by the rain.
Fig.11c illustrates the poem “Song of the Mortal Lover,” which is a companion poem to “The Sea Princess,” basically the story of a Sea Princess who falls for a mortal lover, who, of course cannot live under water. “Song of the Mortal Lover” tells the story from his perspective. Lured by the voice of the Sea Princess, stanza 3 reads:
Oh! Night and Day it calleth, The summons of the sea, Beyond, beneath the Ocean A Goddess waiteth me! Far, far, Beyond that Star The first–born of the night! More fair than moon Or summer noon Love’s beacon burneth bright.
Paul’s illustration now becomes self–explanatory.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
It is interesting that as we progress from Heart’s Desire through to The Sea Princess and Other Poems Paul’s illustrations become more adventurous in style and symbolism, and one wonders what he would have produced had he gone further. Unfortunately there seem to be no other books illustrated by him besides those done for Wright and the Doris Hughes book, all published between 1925 and 1933, for most of which period (1926–1933) Paul was involved with the Kibbo Kift, though how far that organisations tenets (use of myth, symbol, cultural maps etc) influenced his illustrations is not clear. Plus it is intriguing that Wright was fully 45 years older than Paul, so one wonders how their paths came to cross – it can hardly have been via the Kibbo Kift, for they knew each other before Paul had joined, plus one cannot imagine the rather straight–laced Thomas Wright dancing round a field dressed in a KK uniform, and holding a totem pole. But the Kibbo Kift were very craft oriented, and had an interest in local folklore and obscure dialects, so perhaps they, via some route unknown at present, brought Paul & Wright together.
Another possible route is via the following. In his Preface to The Land of Souls, Wright tells us:
It is also gratifying to me to have been able to secure for the illustrating of the book the services of that marvellously imaginative artist Cecil W. Paul Jones, whose graceful pencil has caught precisely the spirit and has surrendered itself continually to the symbolism of the poems....My readers will be interested to know that he is a lineal descendant of the famous eighteenth century admiral to whom he owes his name.
Wright’s enthusiasm for the famous admiral (John Paul Jones, of course) extended to the inclusion of a poem about him in the book! Wright also mentions this story in his Autobiography, in connection with Heart’s Desire, thus: “I was fortunate enough to secure a most suitable artist to illustrate my poem – Mr Cecil Paul Jones – descendant of the famous admiral.” (p.198)
Given that Wright had such an interest in Admiral John Paul Jones, one wonders if it was that which led to their meeting somehow. Perhaps it is worth mentioning, though, that Wright’s interest in the admiral can have had nothing to do with local history, for John Paul Jones had no discernible links with Olney and its environs. Wright’s interest, going off his poem “Paul Jones” in The Land of Souls, may well be connected with his interest in the love–lives of the famous, for the poem is based on a letter written to the admiral by his mistress, Aimée de Telison in 1780. But in fact the link to the admiral may be nothing but a legend based simply on a coincidence of names. As Richard Paul–Jones told me:
I have heard about the John Paul Jones link. He was born John Paul and added the Jones later, so that part of his name would appear coincidental as he died in poverty in 1792 and our Jones did not join the Pauls until 1871. As admiral of the American navy in the revolutionary war the English called him a traitor (buccaneer is only marginally less derogatory). He was Scottish, as was the Paul branch of our family which is why he is not considered a traitor as the Americans and Scots both contested English rule....I have no idea if he is family, but happy to keep the possibility alive.
Finally, recalling that inscription in Fig.1a, another possibility is that Wright knew Paul’s father, Walter, and that it was Walter who directed Wright to Paul as an illustrator for his books. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, there is no documentary evidence for this.
As we have seen, Paul’s three marriages all came after he had left the KK, and I was aware that in later life he had worked for the British Standards Institution, which seemed in stark contrast to his membership of the KK, to say the least. I mentioned this to Richard Paul–Jones, and he told me:
After the war Paul married Nikki and with this, his third marriage, came a level of family responsibilities which had eluded him in the first two. My take is that the subtext was “OK, time to grow up, stop doodling and earn some money”. Whether this came from Nikki, Paul’s father, Walter, Paul himself, society at large emerging from WWII, or is just a figment of my imagination, is a matter of conjecture. Whatever, he worked for the Rayon Federation for a while and then for the British Standards Institution (BSI.) This was a job which required precision, attention to detail and the sort of brain that seeks and recognises unintended outcomes – qualities he had in spades.
In fact he became a technical editor at the BSI, a rather more orthodox role than that of the editor of the KK’s cultural newsletter, Wandelog !
Richard well remembers one project he worked on at the BSI:
In 1967 I was at college and living with Paul, I came home one day to find his at his habitual workplace, the kitchen table, doodling stars on scrap paper, another habit of his. He said that his employers, the BSI were going to standardise the stars used to grade the octane rating of petrol and which did I prefer? I said I liked the ones with a tail like a shooting star. He sent in several designs and they went with the eight point version with which we all became so familiar.
The chosen designs are shown here as Fig.12. They were in use until they were phased out in 1989.
This rather seems an artistic come–down from the book illustrations done for Thomas Wright, but if we go back to 1948 we find a much more interesting project in which Paul was involved, this time with Angus McBean. It is the surrealist design (actually a photograph) in the style of Giorgio de Chirico shown in Fig.13a.
By way of background, Angus became famed for his surrealist photographs of singers, actors and film–stars. The example shown in Fig.13b is one of my favourites, and clearly owes much to Salvador Dali. It is of American actress and singer, Frances Day, and was taken in 1938. Now, it was Angus’s habit to send out photographic Christmas cards, often in a surrealist style, and the one shown in Fig.13a is one such, having been sent to Paul by Angus in 1948, with the caption inside it reading, “My Dear, we must just have got to Battersea Park!” Its creation is of some interest for it is a black and white photo of the small ‘stage–set’ shown in Fig.13c. The couple to the lower left are actually from the photo of Paul and Angus’s mother, Cherry, shown in Fig.13d. The classical bust is actually a real piece of sculpture but with the right hand side of the face (as viewed by the observer) replaced by that of Angus, a piece of trick photography that gave Angus much trouble. (The effect is easily missed, but the eyes show it clearly – Fig.13e.) [Browse here.]
Interest in Surrealism in England was aroused by the first International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936, and both Paul and Angus were just two among many artists who fell under its spell. Oddly enough, John Hargrave, himself an artist, regarded Surrealism and Modern Art generally as an evil influence and a disintegrating force on modern society, almost a form of Black Magic (7m). Ironically, in the late 1940s Hargrave went on to become a psychic healer using what he called Therapeutic Psychographs to effect cures by contemplation of them, these being arguably a form of modern abstract art, but by another name (7n) !
Paul had a wide variety of interests. His little book of 18 pages, Making Your Own Mosaic, was published by Philip & Tacey, London in 1953. (Bill Tacey was another member of the KK.) It contained a short appendix on mosaic paper craft for infants by L. Hogan, Art Mistress at Twickenham County School, and was linked to the sales of ‘Ravenna’ gummed paper tesserae to schools “at a fraction of the cost of working in stone or glass.” It is now extremely rare.
In about 1950 he also invented a device for drawing accurate ellipses which was effectively a limited forerunner of the Spirograph of the 1960s. Its basic function is illustrated by Fig.14, this being one of Paul’s own sketches. The inner disc has precisely half the radius of the outer ring around which it moves, Spirograph–wise, the hole P tracing out an ellipse as shown. By putting a set of holes into the inner disc at different distances from its centre one could produce a family of ellipses of a variety of eccentricities.
Next, there is the intriguing story of Paul’s appearance on early TV and his & Angus’s dealings with John Logie Baird:
Angus had a studio in Endell Street near Covent Garden and John Logie Baird had his workshop in Long Acre, also in Covent Garden. Paul had ended up there playing a role in a Shakespeare play which was being televised. I have no idea if it was broadcast or just JLB testing the equipment. Also, I have no idea how Paul ended up at JLB’s but I suspect it to be a combination of the location, Angus being involved with performing arts, his connections with the theatre generally and the Royal Shakespeare Company in particular. Plus Angus’s state of almost permanent impecunity (he tended not to pay Paul very much, if at all) and the possibility of there being a fee for helping JLB probably also contributed. Other than it being Shakespeare, the only detail I have is that Paul described having a broad blue line painted down his not insubstantial nose. I was a child when he told me this and for the life of me I could not understand why he would have had his nose painted, maybe something to do with Shakespeare being historical and historically the ancient Britons had a propensity for painting themselves in woad – the wonders of a child’s mind... Many years later, having seen recreations of early, mechanical TV I can see that there is almost no definition in the pictures and a well–defined nose and dark eyes and mouth make a face almost recognisable.
The first programmes were officially transmitted by the BBC in 1930, and quite possibly this episode took place in connection with the BBC’s first Shakespeare broadcast in 1937. Baird died in 1946, so if Paul and Angus were personally involved with him, the episode described by Richard must have taken place in quite a narrow time frame. It would be interesting to know more!
But to finish with art, Richard told me:
When Paul retired he gained a degree in the History of Art with the Open University, which, as far as I know, focussed on the Renaissance. I do not know of any particular favourite artists, but his taste was eclectic. As well as the old masters, I remember him coming home enthusing about what we would now probably call a block–buster exhibition of Islamic art in one of the large London galleries or museums. He loved print and I have several of his folders of graphics and illustrations from old books, logos, cartoon–style drawings and photos. He also loved The Beatles and kept a scrapbook of cuttings along with his own drawings of them (taken from photos, not life.)
He presumably had an interest in Islamic Art much earlier than this, for two of the illustrations for Heart’s Desire feature Islamic–style geometric designs. These were not used earlier as the geometry rather dominates them, but I reproduce one of them here as Fig.15a. Also, of course, he copied the 18th century Persian original of Hafiz and Shah Ishac (or Ishaq – a patron of Hafiz) for Rose–in–Hood, shown here as Fig.15b, with a copy of the original painting for comparison in Fig.15c.
As regards some of the art–work mentioned by Richard above, Fig.16a is one of Paul’s sketches of the Beatles, probably done in about 1963–5. They are not his best work, it is true, though in fairness these were just doodles done at the kitchen table. “When I say he loved the Beatles,” Richard added, “it would have been the image, the style, the humour and the emergence of such youthful exuberance that appealed to him – in short, the zeitgeist. I don’t recall him ever listening to their music.”
Fig.16b is one of his cartoons, this one done in a letter to his daughter Miranda, probably when she was at boarding school in the early 1960s. “Paul usually illustrated his letters to us while we were at boarding school,” Richard told me, “the pictures relating to things we had been talking about at home, or in our letters to him.”
Fig.16c is a pair of punning psychedelic cartoons, “Eating Purple (People) Is Wrong” and “Beehive (Behave) Yourself.” “I found these posters after Paul’s death,” Richard told me. “I don’t know, but I presume they were done for his own amusement.” They are undated but their general style is certainly that of the hippie years of the late 1960s and as Richard notes, the ‘Bee–In’ strongly suggests 1967, the year of the “Human Be–in” and the subsequent San Francisco “Summer of Love.” (The former in some ways echoed the ideals of the KK, which was perhaps part of the appeal for Paul.)
Finally, though much earlier in date than the foregoing, Fig.16d is a wonderful example of one of Paul’s many designs for Christmas cards, and one which shows his skill as an artist. It is dated 1947 on the back.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
[Readers should note that all images included in Fig.16 are copyright of the Paul–Jones family and must not be reproduced without their permission.]
As regards his illustration work for Thomas Wright, nothing has yet come to light from family archives to indicate how this came about. Indeed, Richard had never heard of Thomas Wright before I first emailed him, so that mystery, alas, remains.
Note 1: Some copies, though, were privately published bearing the title–page imprint “Thomas Wright, Olney near Bedford”. Unlike the Long edition, the title page bore no date, though on the back of the title page it did say “First published in 1925.” Aside from these details, the two editions are identical. The Long edition is Potter #390, which makes no mention of the Olney edition. The Olney edition is Paas #4708, noted as Potter #390 from a variant publisher. Which, if either, came first is not known, but the Olney edition was clearly made to be uniform with the other two members of the trilogy, Rose–in–Hood and Green Beryl.
Note 2: Wright set up the John Payne Society in 1905. His close contact with Payne over the years led to his writing The Life of John Payne (T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1919). Payne thought enough of Wright to give him the manuscript of his autobiography, which was dutifully edited and privately published in a limited edition of 225 copies as The Autobiography of John Payne (1926). Payne had died in 1916.
Note 3: The Autobiography of Thomas Wright of Olney was published by Herbert Jenkins Ltd., London, in 1936, the year in which Wright died.
Note 4a: J. B. Nicolas, Les Quatrains de Khèyam (Paris, 1867). This was the translation with which FitzGerald so strongly disagreed in the Preface to his second and subsequent editions.
Note 4b: Juan Cole, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (London & New York, 2020). Cole, whose translation uses the Bodleian / Ouseley manuscript of 158 quatrains, also used by FitzGerald, makes the extraordinary claim that Omar wrote none of the quatrains attributed to him, and that all were inventions foisted on his undeserving name! Frankly I cannot believe this, and I adhere to the view that Omar wrote a core of the quatrains attributed to him (that core being of uncertain size, it is true), with many imitations by others being wrongly attributed to him later.
Note 4c: But “comparatively less” only: For example, Arthur Christensen, in his Critical Studies in the Rubaiyat of Umar–i–Khayyam (1927), did a comparative analysis of 18 manuscripts of The Rubaiyat. He reckoned to have isolated 121 common quatrains which he was pretty sure (though not certain) that Omar himself had written. A quick analysis of these 121 reveals that no less than 67 were in the Bodleian / Ouseley manuscript, which of course means that fully 91 of its 158 quatrains were later imitations accrued during the 330 years after Omar’s death. But even these figures are disputed: Ali Dashti’s In Search of Omar Khayyam (1971) reckons that about a third of Christensen’s 121 ‘genuine’ quatrains are questionable (p.39).
Note 4d: Edward Heron–Allen, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Being a Facsimile of the Manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, with a Transcript into modern Persian Characters (London, 1898.)
Note 5: A copy of the decree absolute can be found online. For a newspaper report on the case, see Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, issue of 3 May 1908, p.22.
Note 6: Oddly enough, one of the best published sources of information about Paul is in the detailed biography of his close friend, Angus McBean: Adrian Woodhouse, Angus McBean: Face–maker (2006) a) p.42; b) p.64; c) p.80–1; d) p.99; e) p.284; f) p.43, p.53, p.211; g) p.178; h) p.165, p.178; i) p.43; j) p.202; k) p.203; l) p.213–4; m) p.42–5 & p.53–5.
Note 7: Literature on the Kibbo Kift is another good source of information about Paul: Cathy Ross with Oliver Bennett, Designing Utopia: John Hargrave and the Kibbo Kift, published for the Museum of London by Philip Wilson Publishers in 2015. a) p.41; b) p.67, p.88–9; reported, including an interview with Paul, in The Kensington News and West London Times on 8 April 1927, p.5, col.6; c) p.89; d) p.55; e) p.73; f) p.85, p.159; g) p.90; h) p.67–8; i) p.89; j) p.53, p.56, p.94, p.122; k) p.129; ; l) p.60–1; m) p.139; n) p.134 with examples on p.136–7;
Note 8: Annebella Pollen, The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, subtitled “Intellectual Barbarians” (Donlon Books, London, 2015.) a) Compare the image on p.89, caption on p.220; b) p.164 with images on p.167–169 &captions on p.221. See also the caption to the photographs of the banner in the excellent online exhibition of Kibbo Kift material at the Museum of London from which many of the illustrations used in this article have been taken, and on which both Pollen’s and Ross’s books rely heavily; c) Based on the caption attached to the image on the Museum of London website;see also Cathy Ross, as note 7, p.121; d) Pollen, p.159–161;
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Primarily I must thank Richard Paul–Jones for supplying much useful information about his father, and for the use of images of his father’s unpublished art–work, as well as of family photographs. I must also thank the London Museum for use of material in their Kibbo Kift Archive. Finally I must thank Joe Howard for his useful observations on Heart’s Desire.
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