I Once Met… Stanley Spencer
In 1955, when I six years old, a small man came to our house about once a month. He had grey hair brushed forward, glasses with transparent frames, a baggy suit and a shirt with no collar. My parents called him Stanley. I found him unusual, but not frightening. He was easy-going and talked a lot in a whiny voice.
‘Hello, David. What are you up to? Got any new cars?’ he might say.
And to my mum, ‘Now, Mary. When’s the next opera?’ He’d wrinkle his nose. ‘I hope it’s Pirates of Penzance.’ My mum had sung in an amateur performance of HMS Pinafore; Stanley had come with my dad and me and half the town – which was Marlow, Buckinghamshire.
Stanley used to come and play chess with my dad. Dad sat in his armchair; Stanley on the sofa nearer the fire; the chessboard on a low table beside the tea and toast.
Sometimes, Dad and Stanley went upstairs to where Dad painted pictures. One day, I heard Dad tell his friend Wing Commander Hayes, ‘I’m having painting lessons from Stanley Spencer.’
‘Good Lord, Clifton!’ said the Wing Commander, who was a war hero.
Stanley must be good at painting, I thought. I studied the picture of my halfsister above our mantelpiece. Stanley had drawn it. It looked just like her.
My dad sold seeds to farmers; so he drove around visiting farms. Sometimes I went with him after school. One day we were driving along and he said, ‘Let’s go and see old Spencer.’
We parked outside a small house in Cookham. Stanley opened the door. His pyjamas were sticking out under his trousers. ‘Clifton, David, come in.’ We walked into a large, cold room. An enormous canvas was stretched across the further wall. Stanley had drawn all over it in pencil and, here and there, he had painted something: a swan, a straw hat. He had divided the canvas into squares with a pencil.
Stanley made tea and gave me an orange drink. Then he climbed a ladder which had a seat attached to it at the top, near the ceiling, sat down and started painting.
He said the painting was called Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta. After a while he came down the ladder, smoothed out a large sheet of paper and beckoned to me. ‘You see, David. This is how I do my paintings. I draw the picture on paper like this. Then I rule squares over the drawing. And I rule squares on the canvas.’ He pointed at the wall. ‘See? That’s how I know where to put the paint.’ He pointed to the hat on the paper, and then to it on the canvas. ‘That’s clever,’ I said. The next time we went, I took my autograph book and he drew a picture of himself in it (pictured). We visited him there many times, and he kept coming to play chess. Then he stopped coming. Dad said that he was ill. We visited him in another, warmer house in Cookham. There were people looking after him, and he was up the ladder painting the same painting. Stanley had been born in that house, Dad said. He died not long afterwards – 60 years ago, on 14th December 1959, at the age of 68 – and the painting was never finished.