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The couple found a ramshackle farm house with
neither running water nor electricity at Fawley Bottom
in the Chilterns and stayed there for seven decades.
It would soon become an artistic hub, at first for the
avant-garde but later the Pipers became disillusioned
with the abstract and returned to the real. Indeed
Piper’s artistic pendulum swung so far to the real that
his work was often more vivid than the real thing.
All this went down like a lead balloon with their very
abstract friends Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth
who viewed John Piper’s neo-Romanticism as heresy.
They came to Fawley Bottom to have it out with Piper.
Myfanwy’s diary entry for 13 May 1936 reads simply:
‘Ben and Barbara. Hell.’
Natasha Spender, the concert pianist wife of poet
Stephen Spender (their daughter is married to Barry
Humphries don’t you know!) first met Myfanwy Piper
when the couple arrived as guests at Fawley Bottom,
Myfanwy, said Natasha, opened the door with a child
under one arm and whisking a bowl of eggs held in the
crook of her other arm. Myfanwy introduced Sophie
Grigson to sorrel soup. When the publisher Jock
Murray and his wife Diana visited Fawley Bottom
during the war the Pipers had such an almighty row
that the Murrays assumed that they were to divorce but
although they bickered John Mortimer wasn't the only
friend to note their enduring love for each other. When
Piper turned 80 Myfanwy contributed to a book of
essays in his honour. She wrote "
I have lived with
John for well over half his 80 years and think I can
say that I have enjoyed every other minute of it."
In 1941 John Piper produced a series of paintings of
Windsor Castle for HM The Queen, who became the
Queen Mother. And though not every one was
impressed – his love of skies heavy, dark and
pendulous
prompted George VI to say:
“You seem to
have very bad luck with your weather, Mr Piper.”
this commission greatly enhanced his reputation and
he became increasingly prized and sought after.
Later, after the King’s death Piper’s paintings hung
at Clarence House for 50 years and the Queen Mum
even took tea with the Pipers in their farmhouse near
Henley-on-Thames. Now I don’t know about you
but when I was a child my mother often called for
radical house and bedroom cleaning in case “the
Queen Mother comes to tea”. I would love to know
if Myfanwy Piper coaxed some household chores
from her children with these words. By all accounts
housework wasn’t Myfanwy’s strong point and the
intellectual and artistic life at Fawley Bottom took
place against a backdrop of overflowing ashtrays
and unmade beds. Kenneth Clark’s wife is said to
have once found a drowned mouse in her bedside
water jug.
………...Continued overleaf