Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     In 1945, Paul Hamann and I were close friends, and every Saturday I spent most of the day with him in his studio in St. John’s Wood, one of the largest and most beautiful in London. At this time, my whole life revolved around these visits, which were like sawn-off sections of a marriage, consisting of cleaning, washing-up, cooking, entertaining and conversations.

     Sometimes there would be other artists or pupils with us for a meal, Lotte Karolyi, for instance, Irene Beeson, Pam Craxton, and later, of course, Erich Kahn. One Saturday I arrived in the studio to find an elderly, shabby man sitting with Paul.

     His grey, dirty hair hung long and straight from a well-cut head, and his overall appearance was one of disorder and self-neglect. From time to time, his nose dripped and he would casually wipe it on his frayed sleeve.

     Paul introduced us: Kurt Schwitters, Joyce Parker. I happened to have two handkerchiefs with me, so I tentatively proffered one stamp-sized piece of cambric to Schwitters the next time a drip started its downward trail from his fine nose; he thanked me gratefully, unembarrassed as a child, and used it noisily and thoroughly.

     ‘You are a very kind girl, and a beautiful one’, he said. ‘You must come to visit me at my house in Barnes. Will you?’ I looked at Paul, who gave an imperceptible nod, for I was not enthusiastic, and did not much care for the look of this rather battered man, though his eyes were kind and searching.

     Paul said: ‘He has a friend living with him, a beautiful young girl, called Wantee.’ ‘Yes, you must come and meet my darling, my Wantee.’

     I agreed to go and spend a day with them the following week. The day came and I duly arrived at a semi-detached house in a typical suburban road in Barnes.

     A vivid, dark girl, slim and primly dressed in a tweed skirt and tailored shirt, admitted me, warmly smiling, immediately presenting me with my handkerchief, carefully laundered. I loved her at sight, and thought how strange it was that such a lovely girl should choose Schwitters as her companion.

     When I saw them together, throughout that day and the next, I began to understand their curious, spiritual interdependancy. Schwitters greeted me enthusiastically, and took me Out gleefully into his garden, where we sat for most of the day, surrounded by objects trouvés, table-legs, old bus tickets, lumps of drift-wood, etc.

     We had a simple lunch of bread and cheese and apples, and later he showed me his pictures which covered every wall, and next took me up into the shaky attic, where there were more pictures, merz and formal. Among some portraits he pointed out one of an intense-looking man in spectacles. ‘My friend, Erich Kahn, a very great and dedicated painter. We were in the camp in the Isle of Man together, and ran an arts magazine. Paul and Rawicz and Landauer and many other artists were there, and so we spent a very productive time.’

     Thus I met, by painting, my future husband.

     Schwitters drew a sketch of me, and later, at his request, I played to him on his upright piano; he listened intently and with obvious delight, being extremely musical, as he told me. Afterwards, Wantee said. ‘Now, Jumbo, I am going to wash you and change your shirt, and then we will all go for a little walk along the towpath.’

     She always called him either Jumbo or Switters, never Kurt. She washed him like a devoted mother, seriously and tenderly, and slipped a crisp shirt over his head.

     All this he evidently relished, submitting without the slightest protest. He was already a sick man at this time, looking older than his years, and had suffered from heart-trouble and blood-pressure.

     We had a jolly walk by the river, and at one point entered a church, where Schwitters solemnly kissed Wantee in a most moving way. His devotion to her was at all times strongly marked, invested with a charming dignity, quite beautiful to see.

     As we went along, he recited his merz-poems to us, and said: ‘When I am dead, you know, I shall be famous, and my work will fetch great prices.’ I thought him a kindly, very amusing eccentric, but did not feel myself to be in the presence of genius; however, he clearly believed himself to be destined for immortality.

     ‘You must come and visit us again tomorrow’, he said, ‘to have your portrait finished.’ I was glad to go again as I had several days’ holiday, and the next day was similar to the first, except that on the latter occasion we had supper with Schwitters’s rather dour son and another young man who shared the house with them. We ate rissoles and bubble-and-squeak, cooked by Wantee, of course.

     I can never remember liking a girl so much as I did Wantee; she had tremendous character and charm, though little knowledge of the arts. Her vivacity and intelligence were outstanding.

     In Schwitters there was originality, shrewdness, but pathos and profundity seemed to me to be lacking, and probably for this reason he did not quite come alive as a human being for me, charming and kind as he undoubtedly was during the short period of our acquaintance. However, he was a lovable and entertaining companion, and I enjoyed my two days with him and Wantee in a relaxed, strangely dream-like, unemotional way.

     I shall always remember him with affection, and later he was to be one of the first people to see and admire my own work. I should so much have liked to have been given that sketch he made of me in the house at Barnes, and I have never known what became of it.