Since the first part of my study of Doris M. Palmer was published, a few new details about her early life have come to light, notably that she was trained at the Eastbourne Municipal Art School. Details come from the local newspaper, The Eastbourne Gazette. From the issue of 1 November 1916 (p.4, col.2) we learn that Doris Lambert (as she then was) was a second year student who had been awarded a full–time scholarship on the basis of her first year examinations. More informative is the issue of 31 January 1917 (p.5, col.3) which makes it clear that the School was more geared to training designers and craftsmen – applied art, rather than painting, though painting was taught as a guide to the use of colour in design. The article covers an exhibition of black and white drawings, done by students in two hours or less, as part of a course in book illustration. We are told that the most imaginative of these were by Miss Doris Lambert, though unfortunately no details are given.
As regards her book illustration, it emerged that in 1924 Cecil Palmer published, courtesy of the BBC, Hullo Girls! A Budget of Good Things by the Aunties on the Wireless, a collection of 20 stories for girls which, as the title suggests had been broadcast some time earlier on the radio. Two of the stories, “A Pixie Story” and “How Timothy found his Kite”, were illustrated by Doris. Two illustrations from the second story are shown here as Fig.1a (p.70) and Fig.1b (p.71), along with a full–page colour illustration of Christ’s Nativity, shown in Fig.1c (facing p.128), which appears not to be related to any story in the book. The simplistic style of this last rather reminds me of some of the illustrations in Tell me a Story, and its bold colouring that of her Rubaiyat illustrations. Incidentally, in 1925 Cecil Palmer published Hullo Boys! A Budget of Good Things by the Uncles on the Wireless, but Doris contributed no illustrations for this.
Unfortunately, though, many questions remained unanswered about the artist’s later life: had she separated from her husband, Cecil Palmer, at some stage, and what did she do after the publication of her last illustrated book, Tell me a Story, in 1931 ?
Nearly two years after that study went online I was contacted by two of the artist’s grandchildren, Mary N. Byrde and John E. Byrde (to distinguish them from their parents, Mary T. Byrde (née Palmer) and John M. Byrde), who were able to supply much information about their grandmother, affectionately known to them as Granny Groo, though neither of them can remember how that nickname came about. As might be expected, they were able to supply some family photographs, one of my favourites being a Lambert family group shot dating from about 1902, shown in Fig.2a. Doris is at the front, centre–stage, and arcing around her, left to right, are brother Charlie, father Auguste, brother Raymond, sister Eileen, mother Georgina and sister Irene. Fig.2b shows Doris, Cecil and their baby daughter, Mary Therese, born in 1924; Fig.2c shows Doris and Cecil together, he being much taller than her mainly on account of his long legs, it seems, this photograph dating from about the same time as the previous one. At the time these photographs were taken, the family were living at 2 Tanfield Court, The Temple, London, where they seem to have lived up until 1930. Fig.2d shows Doris later in life, in about 1970, this photograph having been taken at Littlehampton on the south coast, of which more later.
Mary and John were able to confirm that Doris and her husband separated in the early 1930s, though they probably never divorced. Perhaps for this reason, though they remember a lot about their grandmother, Doris, they have no recollection of ever meeting their grandfather, Cecil, though Mary still has a drawing of him which, according to an inscription on the back, he gave to their mother at Christmas 1951 (Fig.2e.) The drawing is signed by Society portraitist Herbert James Gunn, though how it came about is unknown at present. That their separation was reasonably amicable is confirmed not only by this gift, but by an entry in Doris’s diary for 1946 (22 October) which shows that Cecil sent her money, probably to help with the medical expenses she was incurring in those pre–NHS days.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
To deal with some biographical details first. I here quote grandson John’s account of what happened after Doris and Cecil separated:
Doris and Mary, her daughter, went to Eastbourne, to her parents’ home at 5 Lewes Rd. Her family were strict Plymouth Brethren, but the daughter Doris would have nothing to do with that side of their life. (She herself seems to have been a non–denominational Christian.) At around that time, in 1930, her mother Georgina died at Hellingly Asylum, Hailsham, Sussex. She had been committed there by her husband Auguste, driven to despair by her erratic and spendthrift behaviour (she would go shopping around Eastbourne, booking things to her husband’s client accounts, until he had to put an announcement in the papers that he would no longer take responsibility for her purchases on his account). Georgina was a wilful redhead, by all accounts, and a menace to the reputation of Auguste, a respected teacher and leading figure amongst the local Brethren... After Georgina’s death, Auguste’s sister Clara (Aunt Lala for us) came to look after the family and took on Mary’s upbringing. Lala was also a Plymouth “Rock” but more chalk than the granite of the others; thus, she allowed herself a radio, forbidden to the others. I suspect that Lala’s presence enabled Doris to return to London to pursue her career and be with her new partner Bertie, who, I believe died of TB early in World War II.
Her career at this stage was one of commercial art for magazines (she was listed as “commercial artist” in the 1939 register, remember) and we shall return to this aspect of her output in due course. Meanwhile, to continue John’s account:
Anyway, from 1943 on Doris was certainly back in the family at Eastbourne. Her daughter Mary had married John Martin Byrde, a Flying Officer in the RAF, in 1942; I believe Doris had accompanied Mary to Cricklade, Wiltshire – evacuated from bomb–prone Eastbourne – for my birth there in February 1943. The rest of the war was spent mainly at Eastbourne, where my sister Mary and brother Nicholas (now deceased) were born. Doris loved the sea but even more the South Downs with Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters. Beachy Head was where we went for walks, sometimes witnessing the bombing on Eastbourne.
TB again enters the picture at this point, for Doris contracted it in 1947 and her daughter Mary in 1948, so that, of necessity, Mary’s children were had to be cared for by various relatives. Doris seems to have recovered her health relatively quickly, for as John tells us:
At some point in the early ’50s, Doris moved to Brighton. As she was on sickness benefits, she could no longer work as a commercial artist, but her main daily activity was still painting, mainly in tempera and pastels... She was desperately poor, often using cardboard as a support for her works. I seem to remember the one–roomed (?) flat belonged to her brother Raymond; anyway, I remember her cursing him as she fed shillings into the gas meter for a stove that barely warmed her room.
Doris’s daughter Mary’s recovery was not so rapid:
Mary’s convalescence lasted over 10 years. The children fully rejoined their parents at Maidstone in 1956 and Doris joined the family at 60 Holtye Crescent in 1958. She remained with us for the rest of her life. Her room was her studio. We loved her dearly and she each one of us, respecting our different personalities and ways. I remember her teaching us to dance the Charleston. She was certainly eccentric to many of those around: dressed always in a long black skirt and jumper (she was very slim) with a touch of red somewhere, usually her neck scarf (Fig.2d). Fiercely socialist (after all the NHS had saved her life and her ex–husband’s Ill–Fare State paid her benefits), she was probably a strong influence on the family’s engagement in CND, anti–fox hunting and other such activity in the late 1950s and 1960s. Her paintings often had a social narrative: factory workers, Gypsies...
One inevitably wonders if Doris’s socialist leanings, as opposed to her husband’s “die–hard Tory” inclinations, was a factor in their separation. At election times she is known to have adhered to the slogan “Up the Reds!” and John recalls that “Pigs!” was a frequent response of hers to the social and political status quo. However, Doris seems to have continued to love Cecil up until her death, as the entry on her death certificate would seem to indicate. Indeed, as her diaries reveal, she remembered his birthday and their wedding anniversary long after they had separated.
In 1958 the family moved to Rustington near Arundel, and in 1960 to “Windycot” (Fig.2f), Sea Road, Littlehampton, where the photo in Fig.2d was taken and where Doris painted the sunset shown in Fig.2g. The impressionistic stormy scene depicted in Fig.2h was presumably also done at Windycot, this one being signed “Palmer 1976” on the back. John writes:
For Doris, it was an ideal spot, with a full view across the road of the beach and sea beyond, her cormorants taking up their guard at the end of the breakwater. Windycot was her home and studio until her death in 1977, September 27th, at Worthing Hospital, after taking ill.
Mary added to this:
Windycot was quite small and Groo had the room looking out to sea. A single bed took up most of the room, with a chest of drawers and a wooden table at the end of her bed where she ate her meals (which were tiny) and painted. Next to her bed were her library books which she changed when she went into Littlehampton to get her pension at the Post Office. She had very few possessions.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
Let us now return to Doris’s artistic career. As we saw in the main part of this essay, her career in book illustration ran from 1920 to 1931. After that, by necessity or design is not clear, she moved into in commercial art in a rather unexpected way: cartoons, though perhaps we should not be too surprised that Doris turned to cartoons in the 1930s, given some of the vignettes in her book Tell me a Story.
To begin in the early 1930s, her “Reggie Rat” series of cartoons was published in The Sunday Express. Mary’s mother told her that as a child she had been frightened of the rats in their home in Tanfield Court, London, and that is why her mother, Doris, started these cartoon stories to make her less afraid. Fig.3a is one of four examples which have survived (unfortunately none of the cuttings is dated.) Readers may recall that Mr and Mrs Ratentat and their children, a rat family from Catford (“a very unfortunate place for a rat to be born”), featured in Doris’s book for children, Tell me a Story. The illustration for that story is reproduced again here as Fig.3b for comparison.
Three of these stories have survived as newspaper clippings, again undated, unfortunately, though the fact that they were found in the scrapbook to be discussed in the next section, would seem to imply that they probably date from about 1939. Two of them are shown together in Fig.4, and they are clearly the ‘descendants’ of Tell me a Story.
Fortunately a scrapbook containing a large number of Doris’s cartoons has survived in the family archives, and this reveals that she did work for at least fifteen different newspapers and magazines. Many of these have dated in their content, of course, but a surprising number have survived the test of time and reveal Doris’s fine, and sometimes wicked, sense of humour.
First, two butler–related cartoons: Fig.5a is from The Leader (9 February 1937) and Fig.5b from Pearson’s Magazine, though unfortunately Doris did not record the date of the issue. However, since the last issue of the magazine was that of November 1939, that at least gives us a time frame, as the scrapbook seems to date from 1937 to 1940.
One of my favourites among Doris’s cartoons is the one shown in Fig.6, from The Bystander (7 July 1937), closely followed by that in Fig.7 from Tit–Bits (15 July 1939).
Doris clearly had her saucy side. Fig.8a is from Guide and Ideas (7 August 1937) and Fig.8b from The Leader (18 December 1937).
In 1939, of course, the Second World War broke out, which, despite being a time of tragedy and horror, was also a source of much material for cartoonists, Doris included. A good gas–mask related example of hers is shown in Fig.9, which featured in London Opinion (November 1939.)
Perhaps the greatest surprise in Doris’s career in commercial art is that, during World War II she did a lengthy series of cartoons for the magazine Men Only. Many of these, being geared to life in the services during wartime, have lost much of their force today, though that in Fig.10a, which featured in the issue of May 1944, does successfully retain its humour, as does that in Fig.10b, from the issue of August 1944. My personal favourite though is that shown in Fig.10c, dating from June 1944.
Note that all of these cartoons – like most of those illustrated in the last section – are signed simply “Palmer.” It is not clear whether she did this to disguise the fact that she was a woman. Certainly, in the case of Men Only, the editorial policy rejected the idea of women readers, let alone women contributors.
Before moving on to Doris’s paintings, we should perhaps mention that she contributed three cartoons to I Couldn’t Help Laughing, a book of cartoons by various different artists, which ran through three editions between 1941 and 1943. Only one of these (p.33) retains much humour today, though (Fig.11).
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
As we saw above, Doris’s paid career in commercial art had to come to a halt in the early 1950s when, having recovered from TB, she was supported by NHS sickness benefits. She did, however, continue to paint for her own pleasure – on bits of cardboard, pieces of wood and cigar–box lids – whatever came to hand, money being tight.
As indicated earlier, many of her paintings had a social narrative – an early example, unfortunately somewhat damaged, is shown in Fig.12. Dated 1951, and painted on the back of the cover of an old book, it shows factory workers changing shift, somewhat after the manner of L.S. Lowry.
Another strand of social narrative related to Gypsies, a popular subject for many artists. Several pictures on this theme have survived, three examples of which, in an Impressionist style which reminds me a little of Cézanne, are shown here as Figs.13a, 13b & 13c. The first two are undated and unsigned, but the third is signed Palmer and dated 1957 in the bottom right–hand corner. Of these pictures Mary writes:
I seem to remember the gypsy paintings were influenced by gypsies in Spain, though I do not think she ever actually went to Spain – she more likely took her inspiration from books and photographs. The trees in the first (Fig.13a) remind me of Mediterranean pine trees, though the hills in the second (Fig.13b) look a bit like the Downs in Sussex. I know she had memories of seeing the gypsies as a child on the downs...
It is interesting that the third Gypsy picture (Fig.13c), to the bottom right and in front of the date, has “failure unfinished”, though it is difficult to see why she was so critical of it.
A fourth Gypsy painting has survived in family hands (Fig.13d), and as can be seen its style is more crude and its colouring more intense than the previous ones. It is unsigned and undated, unfortunately, but as we shall see in what follows, Doris’s style seems to have developed over time from an Impressionist to a more Expressionist one, which perhaps implies that this is a later picture than the others.
On a totally different front is the painting shown in Fig.14a, which is one of my favourites. Signed “M. Palmer”, but undated, it depicts a rather chic woman in a white peignoir or dressing–gown, with her hair in curlers, seated in her kitchen reading a newspaper or magazine, and – rather spoiling any air of sophistication – a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth. She has presumably just got up, though the time on the clock in the background seems to indicate it is 11am, and, on the table beside her, are an empty wine bottle with glasses (remnants of the night before ?) On the back of this is a drawing (Fig.14b), unfortunately rather faint, which is presumably a draft first sketch, much altered when it came to the final painting. Judging by this drawing, the Woman in White was originally more of a cartoon version – note particularly the face peering round the door at the top right. This maybe gives us a clue as to reading the painting, the posh white dressing–gown contrasting with the dangling cigarette, and the reading of a magazine (fashion magazine in the pencil version ?) contrasting with the kitchen setting (note the rolling pin & mixing bowl in the pencil version – the magazine is much more interesting than them!) As Mary puts it, it is certainly a painting with some irony thrown in.
Another rather simpler study of a seated woman, deep in thought over what looks to be a letter, is shown in Fig.15. It is unsigned and, like the previous picture, undated.
On the back of the painting shown in Fig.13c is another shown in Fig.16a, dated 1959, totally different in both theme and style, which perhaps relates to Doris’s interest in Vietnam, to which we now turn.
Though Doris had never actually been to Vietnam, different cultures seem to have fascinated her. The inspiration for Fig.16a could well have come from a book, but the inspiration for the following almost certainly came from TV reporting of the horrors of the Vietnam War, and the plight of the refugees displaced by the conflict. As Mary put it, “she definitely identified with any suffering, be it of animals or people, particularly children, and of course she had experienced two world wars.”
The pictures are again done on bits of cardboard and such like. All are undated but they presumably relate to the American involvement in Vietnam in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first two are shown together in Fig.16b with a matchstick for scale, showing just how small they are. The upper picture would appear to be a woman weeping over her dead child, with a backdrop of flames, whilst the lower picture presumably depicts a stream of refugees, seen across a river moving under cover of darkness – note the lettering showing through, in the lower right, from the cardboard used. The latter is rather cleverly done, I think. Fig.16c, finally, is a more regular sized painting in a much more expressionist style. Personally speaking, this is my least favourite of the batch, being too much of a ‘daub’ for my taste – impressionism taken to too much of an extreme. However, as Mary sees it, this is an example of her grandmother venting her anger and frustration at the plight of the refugees in paint: it is not a pretty picture because the subject matter is so appalling.
Finally, the picture shown in Fig.17a is another of my favourites. Untitled and undated, it appears to depict a miserable rainy day for a group of sheltering holiday makers – the expression on the face of the elderly lady on the right, looking up at her cleric husband (?), is a classic, inviting the caption, “This was all your idea!” Rather happier in subject matter, but in similar style, is Fig.17b. Both pictures are signed “Palmer”.
[The illustrations can be browsed here.]
The first thing one inevitably notices about Doris’s paintings is how different in style they are to her illustrations for The Rubaiyat and the various other books illustrated by her in the 1920s. Artists change their styles over time, of course, and what a publisher requires from a book illustrator may restrict the artist’s freedom of style – certainly it is difficult to imagine most of the paintings reproduced in the last section being used in mainstream book illustration in the 1920s. Both Mary and John suspect, though, that there is more to it than that, and they wonder about the cumulative effects caused by the separation from her husband, the effects of the war, her illness, her relative poverty under State Benefits, and a generally difficult post–Cecil life. Plus, since she could no longer sell her work, being on benefits, they wonder if this gave her a freedom of artistic expression which might not otherwise have had. Whilst this is all possible, I do find myself wondering if Doris painted for pleasure in the 1920s, in addition to doing book illustration, and if so, what form did those pictures take ? Unfortunately none such seem to have survived, if there ever were any, and all we have today post–date 1950.
Again, one would love to know more about how the commission to illustrate The Rubaiyat came about, and what were Doris’s thoughts as she did the paintings (the originals of which seem not to have survived, unfortunately – or if they have, their whereabouts are unknown to the family.) Alas, no information has survived. All we know is that her illustrations were fairly literal interpretations of the text which, intentionally or otherwise, steered clear of Omar’s more overt blasphemies. Having learned about Doris’s aversion to the Plymouth Brethren and her being perhaps best described as a Christian Deist, I was interested to learn that an unpublished poem by Doris has survived which throws some light on her personal beliefs. I reproduced the poem here in full as Figs.18a & 18b.
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To go to a) the original essay on Doris. M. Palmer, click here; b) the Notes & Queries Index, click here; c)the Index of the Rubaiyat Archive, click here.
