whim that they have got, that they want to learn English, and is an excuse to spend some of their husbands’ money. I have to teach them from 9 to 1, then go to lunch with them until 2 (talking English). I get an allowance to cover the cost of the lunch and get paid £12 10s per week. The unfortunate thing is that these women will, I am sure, get tired of English after about three weeks. No, I no longer teach the two ladies,’ I informed my mother (on 5 March 1969). They have gone to France to buy clothes and won’t be back for a while. Anyway, they had got fed up of the classes, as their English was nearly as good as mine.
But my carefree Munich existence was not without some clouds. Reminding me that Elliott did feel a responsibility for me, my mother wrote to say he had said she should ‘take me home’. I replied (7 April 1969):
Elliott is talking nonsense telling you to take me home and I am glad that you and Alice have the good sense to see that. I just want you to see and remember that I am, and always have been, completely different in temperament to any of the others, so to try and make me lead the same sort of lives they do, would be absolute madness, and were I to come home and work in Dublin, which is what Elliott wants, I would be very, very unhappy. You must know that I am not wasting my time here or anywhere else, and you may rest assured that I will turn out alright, so don’t worry.
The paragraph which followed contained the sort of news that could only have worried my mother more and added fuel to Elliott’s fire:
I went to High Mass with this family that I have got to know. There was one Cardinal and four bishops – all very colourful. There was an enormous crowd of people, all waiting to get communion from the old Cardinal. Ordinary old bloke he was too: just as bad as they are at home.
But all the time, I knew that this happy, carefree and very irresponsible life had to end and that I must not stay on in Munich for more than a year or I might be trapped, with no qualifications and no career, in an expatriate existence for life. Furthermore, Penny and I had influenced each other too much and we had become too alike to make a success of any longer-term partnership and, with sadness, we both knew it. I applied to the Courtauld and to Edinburgh University, and I was interviewed for a place on their courses by both. The interview at the Courtauld was in February or March. My friend Peter Feuchtwanger wrote to me (on 24 January 1969): ‘Was pleased to receive your letter this morning and to learn that you are planning to come to London for the interview. When will it be? I shall write to Prof Gombrich2 the moment you have a definite date. I hope you will stay with me.’
My Courtauld interview, by Anthony Blunt3 and one of his lecturers (I don’t recall who), was one of the cruellest experiences I ever endured, and I have never forgotten it. Blunt started the interview by telling me that they did not normally accept someone with my background but that they had had one of Anne Crookshank’s pupils the previous year and ‘she had done rather well’. As an art history qualification was offered by very few universities at this time, I must have been relatively rare among applicants in that I already had a degree in the subject. So, if that was not an acceptable background, I did not know what could have been. In stating in my application (as one was asked to do) the two fields of study that interested me, I had plumped for ‘seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painting and architecture’ and ‘German Expressionist painting’.
When we were seated around a table, Sir Anthony opened the interview. ‘Perhaps we could show you some photographs,’ he said, glancing towards his colleague, ‘and ask you to identify them.’
The colleague passed a small black-and-white photograph across the table. In most cases, German Expressionist painters are recognised by their colour, although there are some artists – Kandinsky, Klee and Franz Marc, with his horses, for example – that are more obvious by their style. A small black-and-white photograph is by no means the easiest means of identifying an artist of this school. As I tentatively assessed the photographs, Sir Anthony – noisily drawing in his breath through his teeth – made me aware of how little I knew. But at the same time, I got some artists right. Wearily, Sir A moved the interview on to the eighteenth century, and more photographs were produced. Throwing one across at me (and this I recall as though it were yesterday), he said, ‘You won’t recognise this, but look at the photograph and let us hear your reasoning.’ As it happened, I did recognise the image (I don’t know how).
‘It’s the Double Cube Room at Wilton,’ I said. ‘Inigo Jones, about 1650.’
The interview was soon over. I was very shocked by the experience and, not surprisingly, I was turned down.
Within five years I was an assistant keeper at the London National Gallery, having beaten several of Blunt’s graduates in the selection process for the post. Naturally, I met Sir Anthony at events in the gallery and I would also meet him socially, in particular at the house of my friend John Kenworthy-Browne. I always wanted to tell Blunt that he had once interviewed me, and I wanted to tell him how uncalled for it had been to treat any young person the way he had treated me. But I never had the nerve to do so. When, a few years later, he was unmasked as the despicable traitor he was, there was no one who was more pleased than me. Turned down by Sir Anthony, my path was directed towards Edinburgh, where I was interviewed for a place on the post-graduate course by Professor Talbot Rice. David Talbot Rice was a distinguished scholar of Byzantine art and a gentleman and his interviewing technique was in marked contrast to Sir Anthony’s cruelty. I was accepted by him and that, as it turned out, was a fortunate and very happy turn of events.
As Elliott’s generosity in funding my education had (understandably) come to an end with my graduation from Trinity, I had to find the means of supporting myself through two years’ study in Edinburgh. An odd little legacy from Old Elliott Potterton (see Rathcormick), which had accumulated since his death in 1929, was in my name and, now that I was over twenty-one, it became available to me. I used it, and I also looked for whatever grants I might find. A Carnegie Trust in Scotland gave bursaries to anyone of Scottish descent who wanted to study in Scotland and, when my mother told me that her grandmother was Scots (which was true), I successfully applied. I also obtained funds from the Arts Council in Ireland: Mervyn Wall4 the novelist, who was secretary of the Council, told me many years later that he had looked at my application sympathetically as he knew of me through Speer Ogle. Then there was the Purser–Griffith Scholarship and Prize. This was based upon an exam that was set in alternate years by Trinity and University College Dublin (UCD). From Edinburgh I enrolled for the exam – which was to be held in UCD that year – but my application was met by the History of Art Department in UCD, then under the formidable Françoise Henry,5 with extreme resistance. Although I had given details of my birth and education in Ireland, including a degree from Trinity it was not enough to confirm that I was Irish and, therefore, eligible to sit the exam. A copy of my passport and an affidavit – yes, an affidavit – from a solicitor was demanded to confirm my Irish credentials. The exam consisted of two papers: one, a general history of European painting, and another on a special subject chosen by candidates in advance. I selected ‘Eighteenth-century British Portrait Painting’. On the day of the exam, when the special subject paper was put in front of me, I saw immediately that the questions were not confined to British painting but ranged over the full canvas of European portraiture. I answered the required number of questions as best I could, but I did write a letter of protest afterwards. I was informed that I had passed the exam but, if I wanted, I could re-sit the special paper. Passing the exam was no good to me: I needed the scholarship, or at very least the prize, and so I sat the exam again. I won the prize; the scholarship went to a diligent nun from UCD.
The fact of the matter was that Françoise Henry could not abide Anne Crookshank. Françoise was the grande dame of Irish art studies – albeit Celtic ones – and had been teaching at UCD since 1932. She had very little interest in post-Renaissance Irish art – which was Anne’s field – and she resented Trinity setting up a history of art department. Matters were not helped by the fact that they were both very formidable and domineering women and both grazed the same field when, in actual fact, the Prairie would not have been extensive enough to contain them. It should be stated, though, that Anne had nothing but admiration for Françoise.
At Edinburgh, I chose to specialise in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art and architecture, and my tutor was