Letter to Marion
26 September, 1940
Chelsea /Thursday
Dearest,
I had a letter from you on Wednesday. I have had two others and told you this in the one I wrote ending in a note from Bill; which you say you have not yet received - it will probably turn up. I also sent you one with a postal order in it. It's only for very little but I hope it arrives all the same.
Well, life is inclined to be boring, except the nights, for although they are full of terror for some poor people yet I cannot be anything but fascinated by their beauty. Until the war the night was just darkness spoiled by ugly lighting on buildings, now it is like fairyland and never the same. Infinitely varied in its colour and atmosphere. Sometimes I feel I should not look at it too much for its pictorial possibilities, I think, are limited.
I went up to town the day before yesterday. It was an interesting but miserable experience. There is hardly a shop window left in Bond Street. Practically all the galleries except Legers and Coolings have suffered; Grieves, a few doors down from Legers, is burnt out and all around in Saville Row, Bruton St., Albermarle St., whole buildings have been demolished. The Burlington Gardens end of the Arcade is smashed and the archway over the entrance to the RA Schools has disappeared. The end of the wall at the back of the arcade is down and the rest is fantastically bulged and twisted out of shape, presenting a wavy line against the sky. Regent St. and Shaftesbury Avenue knocked about; Oxford St., as you have probably read, is one of the worst.
Broken glass is everywhere underfoot. They were sweeping it up and loading it into dust carts when I got to Legers in the morning and were still hard at it at five that same afternoon. All the same nearly everyone is cheerful and in proportion to the damage done the loss of life is very small.
As I walked through the streets I felt I was seeing the end of a world, a little world it is true, and no doubt unimportant in its way, but as I saw it going I realized how I loved it and how I had failed to make the most of it when it was there. That is one of the tragic aspects of one's relationship to things and people.
I am glad to hear that it is comparatively quiet with you. I do not think I would want you to be here even if you had not got Julian to look after. If I could be all the time with you I would not say this, but as conditions are you would be alone far too often.
I have really done nothing about moving the pictures in the studio, although I did get Bill to take four good small ones and I took about a hundred drawings to Putney last week. For the rest I am extremely fatalistic. In a sense nowhere is a hundred per cent safe and I have neither the money nor the time to see about getting things away. Also, I have a feeling that they will remain untouched. I have wondered what I would feel like if by chance I did lose all my work. You know what it means to me. For rightly or wrongly it is my life and I have sacrificed others as well as myself for it. No, that is wrong, not myself - I wanted to do it so it was not a sacrifice. I know that if it did happen and everything went it would be a loss. I would never get over so long as I lived, but all the same I would go on and paint I hope, better pictures to fill their place. Why, even pictures I have sold I may never see again I can call to mind almost stroke for stroke, their good passages and their bad. I made them and they are mine. And like children I love them in spite of their faults. If, indeed, they had been faultless what reason would there be to want to make more?
I want, desperately, everything to stay as it is in the studio, for it is your setting as well as mine and it is the atmosphere that I wanted Julian to know, but I have the energy to make it all again if I have to. Believe that.
Do you know that I have not slept in a bed for nearly three weeks and it is luxury to lie with a blanket on the floor. I sleep soundly whenever I have the chance. Explosions make no difference and I am still very well and still very sure everything will come right.
Here is a bill from Peter Jones, also ten bob extra which perhaps you will register and send them. It is all we can manage at the moment and their bill is a small one. In these days even they cannot stand on their dignity and money is money. However, if you think ten bob is too small an amount to send them try to keep it by you and I will hope to send another ten next month which you can then send with the first.
Friday morning
Have just got your letter. I will pay Eastmans' bill today and tell them to register the dress and send it on to you. There does not seem any sense in keeping it here. And send the £2 I am paying Eastmans instead of sending the 10 shillings I wrote of yesterday. P.J. will have to wait a little longer, that's all.
I am writing this in the Polytechnic basement. A warning went not long ago and as I crossed from the studio a whole bunch of German planes shot overhead, plainly in view and in good formation with our shells bursting round them. Last night was good and our barrage terrific but the blighters have managed to slip through this morning.
I have been offered the chance of putting a few pictures in a strong room and I hope to get them there soon. I suppose it is best not to take too many chances but I think your planchette is wrong about the studio.
Bill is in Sevenoaks. He has had influenza and the children have been ill so he says.
I fear you will be disappointed in the few sketches I have done. They are not particularly good as yet but they at least serve the purely mechanical purpose of keeping my hand in and passing the time. I think something may come of them, but I am not sure. I don't quite see how to approach the subject so I am leaving it to find its own way and to present itself to me in its own good time. I have learned that I do not find things when I run around looking for them. I prefer now to stay receptive and sensitive and observant and I know they will come to me - if it is intended that they should.
Otherwise there is plenty I want to do when the war is over.
All my love to you and Julian. I wish I could see you.
Clifford
PS
I am taking your bracelets, necklaces and other odds and ends to Putney this evening.
Journal Entries
September 27, 1940
Two daylight raids, and Chelsea hit again. Duke of York's Headquarters. Several killed. Also the corner of Elm Park gardens. The very place those unfortunate East End evacuees had been moved to last Saturday.
Met Julia about 4. Went back to tea. Beresford Egan and Yvonne there. Egan very bitter about the war. Had to agree with most of his arguments.
Took some pictures to Putney in a taxi, to safety, I hope. Sylphides, Circus Orchestra, Marion, Tigers and the nude of Celia I might never be able to finish now. I want to keep it all the same.
Did this because of a letter from Marion in which she said the planchette wrote that the studio would be bombed. I feel it will not, yet I have a sneaking belief in the wretched planchette and there were the five fires within a hundred yards of the studio the other night. Planchette has given November 11th this year as the end of the war!
September 28, 1940
Saturday, 11am.
A number of houses in Edith Grove completely demolished last night. People sheltering in the basement trapped or killed. Rescue parties digging them out now.
Later. To Edith grove to relieve Stretcher Party. 5pm. A heap of rubble, broken doors, window frames, rafters, joists, smashed furniture, surround and partly fill a huge crater. Behind, a few bits of wall are still standing.
It is cold and the wind fills my eyes and mouth with dust. In a hole the rescue men are digging, some with shovels, baskets of dirt are filled and passed out. Others dig with their hands like so many terrier dogs after a rat. These men are covered with dust. Their eye sockets darkened and their mouths black with soot as if they were made up for some fantastic part.
Somewhere beneath all the rubble are four people. They have been there since midnight the previous day - nearly eighteen hours. The whole morning and most of the afternoon were spent tunnelling to reach them through the basement of the next house. This failed and they are now being uncovered from the top. Suddenly we hear faint cries. I am sent for a blanket - not one of the good ones - for the first to be lifted out is a woman and she is dead*. Another hour of careful digging and a girl's head and shoulders appear. She is lying face down on an iron bedstead. The lower part of her body is still covered by a heap of rubble and a dead man has been flung across her legs, pinning them down. It is her husband.
By the side of the bed, crushed against the fireplace and wedged in by fallen bricks and plaster, is another girl sitting in a chair, unable to move. Both the girls are still alive. They have been given oxygen and hot coffee.
At last it is possible to lift the one from the bed. She cries a little. She is conscious and very brave. We put her on the stretcher with hot water bottles and many blankets. Dr Castillo leans over her and strokes her hair telling her she is safe and will soon be all right. I bend down and pin the edges of the top blanket together. Castillo asks her her name. 'Iris,' she says, and she looks up at us as I believe the martyrs and saints must have looked. We carry her to the ambulance and hurry back for the other. She is in a far worse state and does not look as if she can last long.
The man is brought out last. He is quite dead. His face is blackened and his tongue protrudes a little; yet there is nothing terrifying in his appearance - only a look of infinite sadness.
It is now getting dark and when we have carried him to the road we find the ambulance has gone. One of the men from the mortuary is waiting for it to return. 'I'll keep an eye on it, mates,' he says. 'He can't get far now.' So we leave him there on the side of the road, a strange silhouette swathed like a mummy in the cheap thin blanket, chgeap blankets were reserved for corpses, lying on the green stretcher - light against the murky violet pavement. I take a last look before going to the car. It is now almost dark and the Corporal is hurrying us. He is afraid the barrage will start before we get back.
September 29, 1940
Sunday morning.
We have just learned that both the girls died, within a few minutes of each other, after reaching hospital.
I can see no sense in it. I must remember that this is only one of thousands of cases and what is going on here is also happening in Germany. I have said this before, but I think I must remember it, or I will lose my sense of values and proportion.
Spent some hours today making a little sketch of what I had seen yesterday. Bill arrived about one. Had lunch. Went to Jimmie's for tea. Neither of us in very high spirits and we talked about the London that is gradually disappearing. He took the nude of José Madrid back to Hampstead. I wished I could have gone with him. I remember the weekends I used to spend there in June and July when I went into the garden soon after dawn and picked flowers for the breakfast table. The war had not started for us then.
The sketch I did today is a beginning. I must make a lot more.
Castillo was grand yesterday. I imagine what he must have felt - his own family trapped in almost the same way a short while ago.
At least three priests were there too. Getting in everyone's way, no doubt with the best intentions. They seemed to me like vultures. One was prominently labelled R.C. I suppose the other two represented different versions of the creed that I cannot help feeling has failed to make a great deal of headway in nearly two thousand years.
September 30, 1940
More work in Edith Grove. Carting bricks and rubble. There is a smell of death about the place. Two more bodies dug out and others are still to be recovered.
A short encounter in the air soon after we started. We all left off work to look upwards. The planes, as small as flies, dived and turned against a patch of blue sky. We heard machine gun fire, but after a few minutes heavy clouds hid everything and we went back to our work.
Not called out during the night. Slept fitfully. At least three times I awoke after the same dream. A wall was cracking and bulging forward, just about to fall on me. Then I saw the wrapped shape of a woman's corpse, bundled up in the position in which she had been found; knees raised towards the chin, arms covering the head and face in a last useless effort to save herself.
October 1, 1940
Made another drawing today. Have plans for two more.
Yesterday, in Edith Grove, I unearthed a bottle of Vibert retouching varnish, full, intact, from under a heap of bricks. I looted it. Goodness knows when it will be possible to get it again from France, and the English substitute is not much good.
Took the little painting of Marion in red dress with green hat and veil to Putney.
Letters to Marion
2 October, 1940
Tuesday night
Dearest Mog,
Can't remember if I answered your last letter or not, I think I did but in any case I want to write to you again. I meant to tell you that I was very glad to hear about Julian and I wish I was able to see him. I am getting worried that he may not know who the devil I am when he does see me.
The raids here are at least not getting any worse although they are bad enough. However, I sleep well every night, which is more than a lot of people seem able to do. I am also beginning to get a few drawings done: grim things, which is what I want them to be and, in a way, badly done, but the vitality of such a subject is all that interests me. I will never want to go back and polish or improve them. They simply serve the purpose, very necessary, of getting something out that won't stay in. And that, I fear is about their only value. You can have no idea how it feels to actually find myself able to carry on a train of thought, from day to day, connected with my real work.
You said you were getting something written and I am so glad. Do go on with it.
When you get your cheque better register it and send it to me at 5 Star & Garter Mansions, Lower Richmond Road, Putney, SW15 and c/o mother. If you send it to the studio it is sure to arrive in the morning when I am not there.
I hope you are both well. I am fine. Hope too that the dress arrived safely.
Lots and lots of love,
Clifford
Blitz
CLIFFORD HALL'S JOURNAL ~ 1939 - 1942 P9
including letters written to his wife Marion and some other correspondence
4 October, 1940
Chelsea
My dearest Mog,
I got your last letter. It came yesterday. I am glad you have got something to send Peter Jones and that you are getting the blankets you wanted from them. I wish I could send you some extra and I will if, by chance, I am able to hook some in.
Nothing has fallen near the studio since one night last week when the Public Library was nearly burnt out, the little builder's yard opposite Kitty's entirely destroyed and three houses in Chelsea Square had their roofs set alight. It was that decided me to move some of the pictures and I have shifted about a dozen - also nearly a hundred drawings. I still feel, however, that we will not be hit. They appear to have eased up on Chelsea this last week but other districts are still getting knocked about.
I understand that there may be a chance of getting a few days off soon after Christmas. I will do my best to get them so that I can come and see you. I continue to get a few drawings done so I feel more interested in things than I did.
I have had some fine, though terrible, material for my diary lately and I think I have made something of it. Newspapers never give the truth, fail entirely to convey the "atmosphere" and sentimentalize too much; so, what I am doing may be of some interest to someone. At all events it gives me something to think about, which is the all important thing.
I notice what you say about getting more bloodthirsty as the war goes on, yet I can honestly say that not once, since it started, have I detected the slightest stirring of what is called patriotism in myself. I have and still feel a great pity and sadness that the selfishness of a very few allied to the ignorance and or stupidity of the majority can between them bring about so much sorrow. I am taking part, I am glad not in a belligerent way, yet I feel as if it all has nothing whatsoever to do with me. I am almost detached from it. I just notice and take it all in, and help the best way I can.
There are too many faults on both sides for me to take any burning interest in the affair. I am glad that I have been able to do what I am doing and not to have to spend my time learning to destroy someone or something that is largely of this county's own making. That it has to be destroyed and that I will be glad when it is, I do not deny. Still, weak as it may sound, I prefer to be where I am.
Before the raids on London started people rather sneered at the A.F.S, and the A.R.P. services. Now we are magnificent, heroes even one reads, and rich people stop their cars and ostentatiously offer us lifts. It's all damned silly if it wasn't so sad. It is clear that the army is having a safe time at the moment but they may be in the thick of it before we are through, however, I think that it will finish in the air and I doubt if the invasion is going to happen. Anyway, I wish I could go back to painting, and the sooner the better.
All my love to you both. I wish I could see you again,
Clifford
On the 7th October Bill wrote the following letter to Marion
My dear Mrs All, (sic)
It was with great pleasure that your ever welcome letter came to hand and this leaves me as I hope it finds you in the pink. No, my dear Marion, I'm afraid that isn't quite right for the witty scintillating conversationalist you once knew as Bill is temporarily but very much under the dung cart. I'm still living like a hermit and hating every bit of it. Cut off from my fellow human beings I do not flourish. I am a tender plant! As for Cliff, as far as I am concerned, he hardly exists. We spent most of last Sunday together, since I have only heard his voice. He, at any event, seems much the same although I think he is sometimes shaken to his consciousness by this rumour that a war is on. However, for the first time for I don't know how long, we look like having a little peace tonight. The sirens screamed their dismal wailings through the night at 8.30 but the all clear went some 15 minutes later, since then I have only heard the moan of the wind in the tree tops and shaking the windows - and an awful row the wind makes against the cables of a barrage balloon on the Heath. To my horror I see that I have left your letter unanswered for a fortnight - it came a t a time when I wavering between Sevenoaks and London, no joke, I came up and down three times in about a ten days, the journey each time taking about 3 hours. We took the children there in a hurry and stayed a week before Dumps went on with Lisa and Judy to Wadhurst. Daisy was simply unbearable while we were there, I shall never forget her conduct and that week was just about the most miserable of my life! Oh yes, thanks for the compliment that Clifford and I like dancing willy-nilly on the studio floor while bombs are dropping at the top of the road. Oh, we loved it only we weren't there long enough, because I remarked in a dramatic staccato for which I am famous "We'd better get out of this, Cliff." And we did - with haste - but nevertheless preserving that dignity for which both of us are so famous. We were young in those days to bombs, if now we should happen to be in the studio when the sirens went, we should be out before the noise had died away. I'm living a dog's life, Marion, life is much worse than even I anticipated. I see nobody, go nowhere, and am shut up here alone every night from dusk on. Difficult to work very much and I simply dope myself with the piano and reading. I've done no painting since my watercolour of Judy knocked Clifford flat. I just showed him how it could be done and felt that I could now rest and blush on my laurels. What wouldn't I give to see you all, all the good old faces, yourself, Cliff, Discher and a few more of the chosen spirits seated round the table downstairs and half a dozen bottles with the corks just coming out and Dumps bringing in the goulash, that ragout, the haggis and the Christmas pudding. I'm just hoping that somehow or other we can all get together at Christmas. I'm so desperate, Marion, that I'm thinking of advertising in Exchange and Mart for a mistress, but I fear it wouldn't answer, I'm just homesick for the faces I love. This letter is beginning to sound a dirge, I'm really not to bad, not exactly happy, life now just seems a succession of days without end and tedious boredom most of the time. I miss all my nice little treats! It was amazing to be at Seven oaks and hear the bickering and quarrelling there, how can one quarrel at times like these? We are still very lucky at Hampstead, the nights with the guns going off continually, the droning of the planes and crash of pieces of shrapnel in the garden and street are not pleasant, and subconsciously nerve-wracking, but the fact remains that they do and have done very little damage in Hampstead. Touching wood and fingering my beads and murmuring the mysterious incantations of Alistair Crowley. One night last week, sick of my own company - I've told you that I am no longer the amusing fellow I once was, and I'm tired of all 3 of my own jokes, I've heard them so many times - I went down town and into the Fitzroy about 6 one night and stayed there until 7.30. Exactly six people came into the saloon bar. Two were sailors who sat at the counter and wrote letters in pencil. The atmosphere was not what could be described as either jolly or exhilarating. For the first time in my life I appreciated the piano player there. There's a boy down the street (no Fred business this - I say this in case you are working up to an excited - now, what's this?) who comes and sits by the fire for an hour or so occasionally. He called here and asked me to sign a petition and started explaining what it was. Don't explain, I said, I'm all for petitions, I'll sign anything you bring me. It was, however, for a deep shelter for Hampstead which couldn't possible be built in under a year, so I signed it all the same but asked if I might put in a further petition that congenial female company from the west end be provided. Anyway, to return to our moutons, le garçons: it turned out that he was a painter, or so he said. Once he had been a bank clerk, you know, he said, bowler hat, blue suit and cane. That was before he became a REBEL. All this sounded promising. He said he spent a winter in Northern Canada, quite alone, minding cattle. That was dreadful, he said, wouldn't do that again - but it was better than the bank. Now he makes a living doing odd jobs, mostly labouring or on buildings. Married, three children, with fantastic ages something like 2½, 1½ and 6 months. Another n the way? I tactlessly asked. No, there wasn't at present. He brought his wife in one night, she was a faded creature, no life, all bone, just as I don't like 'em - but poor devil, I thought. She looked very worn out. With her he was as dull as the proverbial dish water. And she was quite the lady in her poverty- stricken bohemian garb. Poor devil! There's no doubt about the cunning of the Huns not coming tonight. They know very well that I shan't be able to sleep without the usual pandemonium outside. A dirty trick. I went in and saw old Leger the other morning, he seemed quite cheerful - well, ne might, considering what has happened to the premises of most of the fine art dealers in the neighbourhood. Said he was living at Henley and how he missed his rubber of bridge every night! He had quite a good lot of pictures on show. But it's too much of a heartbreak going into London, although actually the damage is not so very extensive and most of the buildings which have gone could well be spared. And I am so annoyed that Peter Jones hasn't been touched. But there, I expect they've got a duplicate of their customers' accounts in some safe spot. I must now be just on 1,000 words and the completion of this article - three guineas - but I'll put in a few more to fill up an odd space.
It's just old Cliff's luck that the first quiet night we've had for - what? Six weeks? - he should be on duty. I'm glad I'll bet he's snoring by now. But this uncanny, wind screeching silence is going to keep me awake. Re, your idea about sending you what I believe in the slaughter yard are described as my knackers. Certainly not. With that pathetic and grim belief in fate for which I am also famous I believe in always having them about me - you know, just in case. I reckon if I go on for a year or two longer the luck must change. As to your further request that I keep myself young for you, never fear. When I signed my pact with Mephi he handed over a bottle labelled elixir of life. That that, when you begin to feel old, he said. The bottle is still in its pristine condition, the cork well in. Didn't you know that my memoir is to be called "RUST NEVER". Never, to misquote Byron, will my sword outwear its sheath, and never will I go a roving "by the light of the moon." When, dear Marion, I cease to love, I shall cease to be. And when I cease loving you - then you can write my epitaph. For that there will be no need for a long time, but there is a very real need that you will not hold it against me that I took a fortnight to reply to your letter but that you will write me one more of your adorable letter ( I don't think I quite like that adorable - sounds too much like Dishers famous: This is the loveliest party I've ever been at - as soon as you can snatch time.
It grieves me to hear that Fred is afraid of you. Shall I write him a kindly letter of advice? He's lucky, he's only got you to contend with but I've got Clifford as well. That man should have lived in Persia; I can see him swaggering about in baggie pantaloons and an enormous scimitar dangling from his side and the fiendish delight with which he would cut off a eunuch's head whose only fault is that his hand had wandered and he had been found wanting. Never shall I forget the blood-curdling look he gave me as he climbed on a bus one night in the King's Road and left us two on the pavement. I trust one of you, he said, gave a fearful imprecation, spat and hurled himself up the bus steps. Trust one of you! I knew who he didn't trust.
Well, my dear, I have long since exhausted my 1,000 words, the fire is nearly out, and I'm a-cold. But I am going to take this to the post tonight so that it will go off by the 8 a.m. collection and you will possibly get it in a fortnights time. It will be grand to go out in the pitch darkness in the wind and rain and know that I shall be quite safe from odd bits of shrapnel. This silence is really uncanny.
Give my kindest regards to Pearl and if you are quite sure you haven't a cold or any germs in your throat, you can give my godson a loving kiss form me. I am worried that he is far away and out of my influence. He should know his Nicene Creed (that shows my erudite knowledge of the church) by now and be able to say the Lord's Prayer backwards.
All my love -no, that's a Disherism again - but a very big part of it -
Yours ever Bill
Journal Entries
October 7, 1940
I feel ill. Certain the meat was bad yesterday. The canteen gets worse and worse and overcharges disgracefully. More than a dozen other men ill too, so it must have been something we had all eaten. Still suspect the meat. Serves me right for eating it - unfortunately they do not provide sensible food. More or less recovered this evening.
Drew most of the day disregarding the sirens. It is really impossible to play hide and seek all the time. Not worth it.
October 8, 1940
Recently I have developed an extreme distaste for sleeping on a stretcher. They make me think of dead people. I prefer the floor and do not find it particularly uncomfortable. I am always so very tired. Most of the men still sleep on the stretchers.
Although I draw most days it is weeks since I have painted and I miss it terribly. I am constantly thinking of clean white canvases of just the right texture on which I long to make exciting and beautiful things.
I think I will never work and paint from any of the sketches I am now doing. They are gruesome and sad. I draw them because I must. I will get them out of my system and then go on to other things. Also I feel that an unromantic, unsentimental record of such happenings may be of some interest. Once I have scribbled them on the paper I forget them. I do not see them as elaborate paintings.
The first exhibition of Official War Pictures at the National Gallery. Rather disappointing. Some, like Nash, simply made fine patterns coloured excitingly. A camera would have done the job far better than Eves in his portraits. Ardizzone saw humour, and I find it hard to forgive him for it, although I cannot help thinking, or hoping, that he must have produced other drawings which have not been exhibited. And because he has been humorous several of our dear critics have made him the hero of the exhibition. The English love someone who will help them not to think. Yet, I must admit that they appear to turn even this vice into a virtue in times of peril, like the present. All the same it's wrong.
Letter to Marion
Posted 8 October, 1940
Monday night,
My dearest Mog,
So glad that the dress arrived safely and I am sorry that I cannot see you in it. I did not know that the bill included the postage. If you have it, send it back to me as I might as well try to recover my ninepence. As it happened I grabbed it in a hurry whilst a scrap was going on overhead and quite a lot was falling down and the shop was in a hurry to shut.
I am storing all my little panels this week in the strong room I told you of. It belongs to a charming fellow who is one of our voluntary drivers. He is a fur merchant and rolling in money. It is in a Maddox Street basement with a fireproof steel door about eighteen inches thick. It used to be Tiffany's the Jewellers.
Did I tell you that I had passed the First Aid exam - very well - 78 out of a 100; so I am quite pleased with myself as most of the lectures were messed up by raids.
I am able, somehow, to get enough sleep. At Putney mother has the divan and I have an air mattress on the concrete floor - but that is luxury. I have developed a certain dislike to sleeping on the wire stretchers since I have seen corpses lying on them. This does not seem to worry the other men but I now prefer the plain floor which is quite comfortable if you know the right way, and my gas mask, in its case, with my folded-up trench coat on top makes a high pillow. Of course, I would like a bed again, sometime, and with you there as well and we will have that once more and make up for a lot of lost time.
Julian does seem to be getting along well and should be ready to learn a few simple swear words by the time I see him again.
There is not much news in Chelsea. Only Marie has left for Somerset or some such place either because of the raids or because the wife of the fat landlord at the Bells had threatened to make her co-respondent. Also, Fiona has clicked again and this time I understand the situation looks like developing as the pills which worked miracles the last time came from Paris and are now unobtainable. One more crime to Hitler's account!
I am still doing a few sketches. Three last week. Two the week before and one today which I had six goes at - and the final one is still wild but has something. It is called "All Clear" and is damned ironic.
All my love to you both and write again soon,
Clifford
'Going to Shelter', 1940, by Clifford Hall.