Unfair on Wantee!
Apr 9, 2013 2:49:13 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 9, 2013 2:49:13 GMT -5
We hope that members will not miss the Schwitters exhibition, on at the Tate of Britain "until the first of May." (It would be wise though not to go on that actual day as it may have closed down during the night.) Besides viewing his collages and portraits visitors may listen to a recording of him declaiming his "Sonata in Proto-sounds" - something we should try to get for the Third.
Shortly after his arrival at Paddington Schwitters was refusing to speak or write German and was regularly drinking tea. Indeed the consumption of tea is universally acknowledged to be essential to the leading of a civilized life. It is twenty years since coffee has passed my own lips. Schwitters's tea was prepared for him by a young lady whom he'd met in his lodgings. She was a Marks and Spencer telephonist who adored the eccentric artist. Her name was Edith Thomas, and she made him so many cups of tea that he called her "Wantee." (She called him "Jumbo.")
In June 1945 Jumbo and Wantee moved to Ambleside, where absolutely no one had heard of him. In Hanover Schwitters had been well off; in England he survived on five pounds a month from a refugee industrialist. Unknown, unsung, his mood was lightened only by Wantee's loving attention. He expired in 1948, and his will, in which he left all his English work to Wantee, was successfully contested by his son Ernst, by then back in Norway. Ernst became the only person permitted to authenticate his father's work, most of which he now owned. Marlborough Fine Art became his agent. Wantee meanwhile returned to London and a "job" as the manageress of an employment agency.
Shortly after his arrival at Paddington Schwitters was refusing to speak or write German and was regularly drinking tea. Indeed the consumption of tea is universally acknowledged to be essential to the leading of a civilized life. It is twenty years since coffee has passed my own lips. Schwitters's tea was prepared for him by a young lady whom he'd met in his lodgings. She was a Marks and Spencer telephonist who adored the eccentric artist. Her name was Edith Thomas, and she made him so many cups of tea that he called her "Wantee." (She called him "Jumbo.")
In June 1945 Jumbo and Wantee moved to Ambleside, where absolutely no one had heard of him. In Hanover Schwitters had been well off; in England he survived on five pounds a month from a refugee industrialist. Unknown, unsung, his mood was lightened only by Wantee's loving attention. He expired in 1948, and his will, in which he left all his English work to Wantee, was successfully contested by his son Ernst, by then back in Norway. Ernst became the only person permitted to authenticate his father's work, most of which he now owned. Marlborough Fine Art became his agent. Wantee meanwhile returned to London and a "job" as the manageress of an employment agency.
