This Much Is True

I was simply and purely proud of myself. And when I got home, Miss Stack, from retirement, had sent a telegram saying, ‘Heartiest congratulations’. She’d sent one to all of us — classy to the end.

I’d also, it turned out, been accepted at Somerville College, Oxford, but Newnham had offered me an Exhibition, which is a minor scholarship that meant I got to wear a longer gown than if I’d come in as a commoner, and I would have more status. Thus, I turned down Somerville and plumped for Newnham. I’m absolutely sure I made the right choice.

Nude Modelling for Augustus John

In May 1960, just a few days before I turned nineteen, I watched a television programme called Face to Face, in which a television journalist called John Freeman interviewed the octogenarian Welsh artist Augustus John.

The conversation with Augustus John was riveting because it was filmed at his home in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, in rooms chock-a-block with half-finished oil paintings and rough sketches, and huge rough-hewn sculpted busts. I was enthralled by him. He was a big man, good to look at — he had an untidy, bushy beard and bright, twinkling eyes. He would have been in his eighties then, but vigorous and naughty, and he had a mischief about him which I relished. He seemed the epitome of a great living artist.

I’d left school and was earning pocket money modelling for the students at the Ruskin School of Art. But Augustus John was clearly the real deal and suddenly I thought, ‘Why don’t I model for him?’

I found out the name of his house in Fordingbridge: Fryern Court. I don’t know how I found his address; I probably looked it up in a phonebook or something, because that’s how you found out about things then — and I wrote him a letter. I said that I was writing to suggest that I model for him, that I was eighteen, with experience in modelling, and it would be such an honour to pose for him.

A few days later, my mother received a phone call from Dorelia McNeill, Augustus’s common-law wife and model for both Augustus and his sister, Gwen. You could tell within seconds (certainly Mummy could) from Dorelia’s clipped, cut-glass tones that she was from the upper classes and someone with social status. I hadn’t told my parents that I was going to write to him, because I didn’t think that anything would come of it, but as it turned out Mummy was charmed by Dorelia; so charmed, that she didn’t demur when the ground rules were firmly laid out: ‘You know, I think my husband is doing a painting of some bathers, so it would have to be a nude portrait.’

I have never understood why my parents agreed to let me do it. I think Mummy must have found out that he was a very famous painter, because as I have said, she was quite the social climber and delighted by celebrities. Daddy might have disapproved but, ultimately, when he saw the determined females ranged against him, he gave way and he did as he was told.

I stipulated that my parents were to deliver me to the house in Fordingbridge and then they must go away and come back a couple of hours later to drive me back. That’s what we did.

Beforehand, I practised taking off my clothes quickly in my bedroom. I remember that I wore a blue and white polka-dot dress, which had, as it were, easy access and I could get it on and off without fuss. I didn’t wear stockings, just some socks and my sandals. So off we drove — it took over two hours to get there but when we arrived at his beautiful old house — a big country manor — my parents, at my request, dumped me on the doorstep and drove away.

I rang the doorbell. Nothing happened for about ten minutes, and I was beginning to get rather anxious, when suddenly from around the side of the house came a very strange, tiny old lady with fine, wispy, white-grey hair, wrapped in a Mexican blanket.

She saw me and said, ‘Oh, hello. Have you been waiting long?’ She rang the doorbell again, and Augustus John came to the door and opened it. He was smoking a pipe, and he was tall and imposing with that full white beard and the shock of straggling snow-white hair I remembered from the television. He wore what I used to call dungarees — it was a boiler suit made out of denim — and he had a little, dark, flat cap like a beret on his head.

I said, ‘Hello, I’m Miriam.’

Augustus John said, ‘Oh, yes. Come in, come in!’